File photo. Photo: RNZ / MARIKA KHABAZI
Youth homelessness advocates are calling for more to be done to help vulnerable young people who do not have safe, stable accommodation.
In Auckland, the council says there was a 90 percent increase in homelessness since last September. By some measures, about half of all homeless are under the age of 25.
It is a complex problem, but one advocate says they have been compounded by changes to the emergency housing criteria last year.
Someone focused on solutions is Māhera Maihi, CEO of Mā te Huruhuru Charitable Trust. She runs two youth housing whare with a specific kaupapa Māori approach.
"Māori, or young people, are saying that they want more kaupapa Māori supported accommodation. We are often seeing that homes are unsafe and unstable for young people due to family violence, family breakdowns and overcrowding," Maihi told RNZ's Saturday Morning.
"We're also seeing that queer and gender diverse young people are a recurring trigger as well. We're seeing that the system is very hard to navigate for these young people from minor things such as no bank accounts, no IDs, to major things like not being able to afford bonds and upfront costs.
"We're also seeing this care-to-homelessness pipeline as well. We're seeing that cost pressures are hard on young people and the affordability, they can't afford it.
"And we're also seeing that they want mana, more mana-enhancing youth supported accommodation. They're saying, 'I'd rather be at home learning my pepeha than on the streets popping cars for somewhere to sleep.'"
One of the changes introduced last year to emergency housing qualification was that applicants might be asked to prove they did not contribute to their own lack of housing. Another was to introduce stricter obligations on clients to find somewhere more permanent to stay.
Maihi said unlike other temporary accommodation providers, Mā te Huruhuru's 12-month placements had zero problems with bad behaviour.
"Yeah, we know as a Māori people that it takes a community, that it takes all the generations, our kaumatua, our kuia, our pakeke, and our taitamariki.
"At He Pā Piringa, we have 18 beds for young people between the ages of 17 and 21 who are homeless. We also have a whare and Ihumātao as well for young wahine who are home facing housing insecurity that is a whanau-centered approach.
"It means that young people who come in, they are in the space of tapu - tapu meaning that they've got restrictions on them, restrictions because they are our taonga… it is to keep them safe and keep the whare safe.
"So we do amazing things like, we use wananga as a concept as well. Any young person who comes to our kaupapa, we take them to the marae and at the marae, there are so many frameworks that we could really lean on, that our tupuna have already blueprinted for us.
"For example, understanding the process of pōwhiri, what the waharoa represents, what the role of wahine and tane are, what the role of whakanoa is as well, and through taking these young people through the wananga and the marae, they often say, 'I can't explain it, but there's this thing, you know, that I just feel like I'm at home. I feel like there's a sense of belonging here and I feel like I respect this kaupapa'.
"And so because there's a buy-in from these young people right at the beginning, we've seen outcomes at Hepapiranga, zero property damage to youth housing - that's unheard of, not just in Aotearoa, but also throughout the whole world - and no police callouts for violence.
"So it's about systems return - it's not about system change. We know that our tupuna had the answers. It's about us returning back to those systems."
Māhera Maihi, CEO of Mā te Huruhuru Charitable Trust. Photo: Mā te Huruhuru Charitable Trust / Instagram
The true scale of the problem for Māori was unknown however, with no official data, she said, and no focused youth homelessness strategy. Many youth also did not technically qualify for social housing, she said, because the rating criteria did not take into account their "vulnerability".
"We've been able to place 19 young people into forever homes, which is very difficult considering there's a social housing rating - young people often can't get more than an A9, but you need about an A17, 18 to be able to get access to these housing.
"So, because of the relationships that our staff are making with these places, we're able to place young people into their forever homes…
"I think that if we're going to use a system like this, we need to think about having a vulnerability multiplier that multiplies the vulnerability because young people, obviously, they are complex, high complex needs."
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