Ending youth homelessness has never been more important! / A.J. Hendry
The reality of youth homelessness is an indictment on us as a nation. The good news is we can end it. We just have to be willing to work together!
The first time I supported a young person to gain access to emergency accommodation is still etched into my memory.
Back then (almost 6 years ago now), it was near impossible to get a young person into emergency accommodation. There weren’t many motels that would take a young person who was experiencing homelessness. And as I was to find out, those that were willing, well, let’s just say they weren’t exactly the sort of places you wanted to go.
I still remember the cold; damp smell as we entered the motel. The place was dark, with flickering lights, not to unlike some abandoned psychiatric ward in a horror movie. The rooms were small, bare, and reminiscent of prison cells. I felt sick just being in the place, I couldn’t imagine living there.
And yet the young people with me were grateful.
You see, just that morning, they’d woken up on Queen Street, where they’d been living for at least the last 6 months. They were just grateful to be inside. And yet, as I left that building, my heart broke that this was the best we could do for our young people. That the options we had were the street, or that disgusting motel.
I often hear political leaders speak about how emergency accommodation isn’t good, but it’s the best system we’ve got, it’s better than the alternative. And yet, my experience, over the last 10 years of serving young people experiencing homelessness, has been that this is just blatantly not the case.
I’ve heard horror stories of young people being violently attacked, sexually assaulted, and harassed. Of teenage girls barricading their door before they sleep at night, terrified that someone will break in. Of moldy, cold, and damp motel rooms, that the majority of us would refuse to stay one night in, let alone live in. Of young people feeling like they needed to do it rough on the street, because the hotel that they were sent to at their moment of crisis was too unsafe for them to remain in.
I’ve sat with young people who have looked me square in the face, and told me with terror oozing from their eyes, that they would rather sleep on the street than stay another night in emergency accommodation.
I can’t begin to express to you the hopelessness I’ve felt over the years. A hopelessness I know that is shared by many of my colleagues in the Youth Sector. The dread of the 5.01pm call, when that young person reaches out on a Friday night, homeless, desperate, and in need. That feeling you have, when a young person begs for help, and yet you know that you cannot guarantee you’ll be able to find them somewhere safe to stay.
The sinking realization, that this young person in front of you has come to you for help, for safety, and yet you’re incapable of being able to provide it.
It’s heartbreaking.
Recently, the Waitangi Tribunal released a report into homelessness, Kāinga Kore. The report highlighted that there were significant gaps in support for rangatahi experiencing homelessness`, and specifically a gap in support for young people in critical housing need. As the report demonstrated, the reality of Youth Homelessness isn’t new. It is an issue that has existed for years (180 at least). It’s also one which we have growing data evidencing that this is a problem, and one we need to tackle with urgency.
For example according to data coming from the 2018 census, children and young people experience homelessness disproportionately to other age cohorts, with around 50% of all those who experience homelessness tamariki and rangatahi.
And yet, there is still more support for you as an adult if you experience homelessness than there would be if your teenage niece or nephew ended up on the street tonight.
Recent reports have also shown that 1 in 10 young people transitioning out of either the care or youth justice system are experiencing homelessness, and that around 29% of highschoolers are in the same position, either sleeping in a car, emergency accommodation, overcrowded housing, or on the street.
And in the most recent Growing up in NZ survey, it was shown that 1 in 14 children experienced homelessness between the ages of 8-12 years of age. And another report into emergency accommodation found that 18% of those in emergency accommodation were young people, and that of all those within hotels, 70% had a care experience at some point in their lives. Demonstrating further how much the issue of adult homelessness is very much grounded in the experience of young people. This is also something we hear from young people experiencing homelessness quite often. That their experience began when they were very young, with some young people saying that they first slept rough when they were 10 or 12 years old.
There is no doubt about it. This is a crisis.
These are our young people, our children, we’re talking about. And the sad reality is, as a nation, we have not provided the resources or services they need to be cared for, loved, or safe.
Recent investment by the Government into strengthening and expanding current youth housing services across Aotearoa is of course welcomed and important. Minister Marama Davidson, who holds the Homelessness portfolio, has been pivotal in elevating the concerns of the sector and ensuring that our young people’s experiences are at the table. When I look back to where we’ve come from, and take note of where we are, I have hope. Change is happening.
And yet, we still have so much work to do. Ending youth homelessness is going to take so much more than housing. We could build a hundred thousand homes, and still have young people living on our streets.
Lack of housing is but one issue in a much larger tapestry of systemic failures, and individual challenges, that contribute to a young person experiencing homelessness. This is why Manaaki Rangatahi, a national collective working to end youth homelessness across Aotearoa, has been advocating for the development of a strategy to prevent and end youth homelessness.
A strategy that would examine the pipelines into homelessness for a young person, and do the work needed to resource and close them.
Poverty, debt, social exclusion, relationship breakdown, traumatic events, family violence, mental health, addiction, systemic racism and discrimination, these are all factors that can contribute to a young person experiencing homelessness.
In order to prevent homelessness within our communities, we need to look beyond simply building houses and funding supported living programs (as important and welcome as these initiatives are). We need to go further, examining the many ways our society fails people when they are in crisis, and doing what needs to be done to close the gaps.
Eradicating poverty, regulating the rental market, ensuring whānau can access free health care and wellbeing support, providing mental health services that meet the needs of young people, ensuring that everyone has a liveable income, all these initiatives contribute to repairing the holes in our current social safety net.
If we want to stop people falling through the cracks, then we need to recognize that this is collective mahi, and do the work needed to close them. None of us can do this on our own.
Our government services and NGOs of course have a role in ensuring that they are clearly identifying those in need of extra support, and that they have the capability and capacity to respond appropriately. Community also has a pivotal role to play, to build communities of care, to ensure we're connected to one another, to organize ourselves so that when our whānau are in need, we are able to identify this, and are empowered to act.
Ending homelessness requires a collective response.
We can end youth homelessness, however we need to be both strategic, courageous, and perhaps even a little bit audacious enough to believe it's possible.
If you would like to us to #EndYouthHomelessness, please consider signing and sharing this petition calling on the government to do just that!
A.J. Hendry is a Laidlaw College graduate, and a Youth Development Worker and rangatahi advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.