Welfare Policy risks homelessness while draining community resources / A.J. Hendry
While we're all advocating for our rangatahi to avoid sleeping on the street, we don't have time to respond to what is actually going on for people...
The Government has recently announced a suite of policy's that toughen up access to support for those needing shelter via emergency housing, while at the same time adopting a more punitive approach to those in need of financial support from MSD to meet their basic human needs.
Those serving and advocating for our whānau experiencing homelessness have warned about the risk of increased homelessness resulting from these policies. Specifically, concerns have been raised about the impact these policies will have on our young people.
The Government has argued that there will always be access to shelter for those in critical need, and emphasised that "as long as people uphold their obligations", they will have nothing to worry about.
And yet, despite the Government's assurances, from a frontline perspective, this is not the case.
Kick Back (the youth development and rangatahi Homelessness service I lead) is constantly supporting young people who are facing sanctions or in critical need yet being denied access to emergency shelter from WINZ.
The reasons provided for these sanctions, or denial of access to emergency shelter, often fail to acknowledge the reality of these young people's situations. We've supported young people who have been denied emergency housing because "they weren't working hard enough to find housing" or because "they contributed to their own experience of homelessness" despite these young people literally living on the street, lacking access to a phone, and in extremely unsafe and dangerous situations.
And though, we always advocate, and are often successful in supporting our rangatahi to gain shelter, the fact that it requires advocacy to gain the shelter the Government has promised will be freely available highlights the problem.
This highlights one of the often unrecognized impacts of tightening access to shelter for those experiencing homelessness. It not only increases harm, and further traumatizes the individuals in need of support, these decisions also put unnecessarily pressure on our already limited and drained community resources.
When young people come to Kick Back, often something extremally truamatic has happened in their lives which has proceeded their experience of homelessness.
When they are then sanctioned or denied access to shelter from Work and Income, rather, than focusing on addressing the core needs of our rangatahi and whānau, advocacy groups such as Kick Back and other organizations that do this mahi, must refocus their attention on advocating for shelter.
This not only sucks up our limited community resource (keeping us in crisis mode), it probably goes without saying that this can be traumatic for those we serve, having a significant and detrimental impact on their mental health, and keeping them stuck in a state of chaos and transience. And while we are all in that space of reacting and advocating, we aren't responding to what is actually happening in that person's life.
The Government's decision to tighten access to shelter for those at risk of sleeping rough fails to address the actual problem (the fact that our people are without access to housing), and thus fails to provide an adequate solution.
The logic underlying these changes seems to be that our people are themselves to blame for their situation, and that if we're just tougher on them, they will magically pull safe, supportive and stable housing out of their back pocket.
And yet, we're in a housing crisis, and the Government has made the decision to pause, stall and cancel public housing developments.
Rather than punishing people we should be focusing on addressing the reasons they need Emergency Accommodation in the first place
Building more public housing would be one place to start.
And while we are doing that, we also need to develop alternative solutions to the current Emergency Accommodation model.
The Government is right that Emergency Housing is a failure, its causing untold harm, costing the tax payer millions, and sustaining homelessness while sucking public money into private back pockets.
However, the solution is not to shove our most vulnerable people onto the street. Its to build alternative models.
Models such as The Safety Net Project, a host home initiative Kick Back runs in collaboration with Massey Community Trust, is one such alternative, providing a safe, supportive space with whānau in the community for young people in Immediate Housing need.
The Front Door, is another model that Kick Back is developing, currently a safe place in the city centre to provide advocacy, support, and access to kai, clothing, mental health services, legal advice and housing advocacy, the long term goal is to make it a fully 24/7 Immediate Housing service, with onsite access to Immediate Accommodation.
It is laudable that the Government wants to reduce the use of motels. However, to do so, we must deal with the core challenges our communities are facing, and create real and meaninful alternatives.
Our communities filled with solutions. If the Government wants to reduce Emergency Accommodation use, while also reducing homelessness and the harm being caused by their current policies, its time to engage with the community.
A.J. Hendry is a Youth Development Worker and rangatahi advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads and co-founded Kick Back, a youth development organizations responding to youth 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.
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