Kiota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Today is World Homeless Day, where organizations around the globe shed light on the issue. Right now, more than two percent of New Zealanders are without a home. Stats and Z figures show more than one hundred and twelve thousand people are now severely housing deprived across the country. In Auckland, there's been a fifty three percent increase in rough sleeping since
late last year. Manarki Rangatahi aims to end youth homelessness in Altieroa. New Zealand CEO Bianca Johanson is with us today on the Front Page to discuss how as a country we can make this happen. So, Bianka, how bad is homelessness among our young people?
Well, we don't have the data and the stats, so we're always asking the government to help us fund and research that. So we don't know the massive size of the problem. We do know that special needs grants back in twenty three early twenty four were around over five thousand per year, So that's for emergency housing. Back when there was emergency housing available. I think it's now down
to the you know, the sort of the hundreds. We do know that doctor Terry and Clark, who did the youth two thousand research, she estimated that there was over one hundred thousand rangatahi and altied or that are facing housing and security and homelessness. So it's a pretty big stat because internationally, youth homelesses is often hidden because of the CouchSurfing and staying at other people's places and you know, going from place to place looking for somewhere stable to live.
And that's what people don't realize. Hey, homelessness isn't just your rough sleepers out in the street that you might be who are visible to us. What else does it include?
Oh, look, there's a growing older woman's homelessness in this country and internationally of course with the recession and the economic issues that everybody's facing, increasing house prices, et cetera, and also our coma to acquire our elderly people. But ford Angitahi, the research is really clear if we start and preventing and ending youth homelessness will make a massive difference in the outcomes and the statistics for those that
are older. So the older street is because I used to work for Life Wise Trust in the Central City and Tarmaki there and all of them that I've spoken to that are aroundy plus housing and security and homeless has started when they were young people and wards of the state and coming out of care and situations like that far no breakdowns, abuse of far noo. For many of them, it started when they were young.
We've had Matama Davidson on the Greens co leader. We've spoken to her before about the fact that when you leave ordering a tamariki or state care, the government isn't actually legally required to make sure that you go into you have a safe accommodation, a safe home to go into.
You would think that the least we can do for these children who have been in the system and are coming out of care, young children, that the least we can do is provide them with that really basic support for the rest of their lives to be able to flourish. What we are seeing, however, and hearing right now, is that young people, even with advocates and support workers, are being told at every stop, sorry, we cannot help you.
I suppose this is something that's not news to you.
Yes, not news to me. Around eight hundred to one thousand young people every year are transitioning out of aut atomitiicy care and a lot of them run away before there is sixteen actually, so we've got a lot of
young people. I mean, I could take you around the Auckland CBD right now and we'll have children and young people that are hiding out underage, you know, perhaps looking a bit older, but are actually younger and do have guardianship and custody orders from Autongtomitiki that are sleeping rough right now, and Autongtomitiche have no idea where the young people are. I mean, if you have children, I have children.
My children are older, but when they were children, when they were twelve and fifteen, I knew where they were. The state does not know where all of their people that they have custody and care for actually are. So yeah, we've got eight hundred to one thousand young people that are exiting care every year, and they're exiting into nothing. They're often disconnected from FARNO because there hasn't been a
relationship kept with FARNO. So the trajectory of their lives and the outcomes that will be their future in terms of homelessness and housing is pretty dire because they don't have faro in those natural community supports to go to, so homelessness can be an inevitability for a vast majority, especially our Dangatahimori who are overrepresented in the care statistics. So it's really grim with auto Atomitiki. I know that they do have youth transitions housing, but there's not enough.
There's not enough in the country for the need that's there. That's what we've.
Seen when it comes to you said that if you take me down to Auckland CBD right now, you'd be able to show me some young people living rough. Yes, what are some of the stories that you've heard from the ground.
From the ground is that young people don't have any front facing information. So if you're a young person in alt or tonight, there is nowhere for you to go and you're homeless. There's no housing there never has been, and no shelters, not for young people, so you can't actually have a tendency agreement if you're eighteen and under. Many of our Angertahi that come into supported youth housing
and youth housing specific are usually under twenty. You know, that's the vast majority that are looking for support so young people are saying, look, there's no front facing information, I can't find where to go. Many of them, if they go into MSD, are not even able to make it to the reception receptionist desk to be able to
get the support that they need. And if they do make it past the receptionist, which is usually quite a bias and can be a very aggressive and oppressive process for them to actually get to see somebody about their needs. But if you're a young person, say you're in Auckland, you're in Queen Street and there's MSD there on Queen Street for you to be able to make it into Queen Street, MISD make it to the receptionist desk, they will ask you to go to a youth payment provider.
Those are the people that usually pick up young people who are experiencing their first out of homelessness or housing and security and they need somewhere to go tonight. So the nearest youth payment provider to Queen Street is an IPSOM, so they're expected without any income, without usually an at hop card or anything like that, having to go all the way to IPSOM to the nearest youth payment provider to get that kind of support. So there's a lot of gaps in the system that ungatahi can fall down.
And this is what we are very very concerned about as Manarchi Dungatahi, that too many of our young people fall down the gaps. And while they're falling down the gaps, they get into really unsafe situations because they are the most vulnerable out there in that kind of street community and culture by virtue of their age.
And even building up the courage to take yourself to MSD in the first place, and never mind actually getting past the receptionist and things like that. I mean, it must be really difficult for these lungatahi. Do they stick together mostly or building community? What's the community like?
Are so varied in terms of, you know, how they do things. We often don't get a lot of our young men coming into youth housing because they tend to be quite sort of independent. So you've got all sorts of stories and experiences happening for people. We've got lgbtqi plus rang a tahi that are getting kicked out of home, usually because they have been coming out or because of
their sexuality. So that particular cohort find it really difficult because there isn't something specific for our rainbow youth to go to in terms of safe housing, especially if you're transgender, et cetera. Then we've got our autotamitikidng a tahi that
are transitioning out of care. And then you've got anatahi who have had some care experience in their lives, like their lives have been touched by the state in terms of investigations or things like that, and they have grown older, the house is overcrowded, they're perhaps encouraged to move on, or they're leaving unsafe fino situations where you know there's abuse or addiction issues and they just can't tolerate living in that situation anymore.
I was not prepared well to leave care. If I was prepared well to leave KRE, I would have been supported to find alternative accommodation. I would have been provided with financial advisors to be able to make better financial decisions. They would have supported me to get into the workforce.
In saying that though I am in the workforce, but also that took a lot of my own work to be able to be better equipped to help our most vulnerable Tamida ge arang Attai and Faro involved with.
TIMID at the moment, does the government legally have to make sure that every young person has a place to live?
No, No, there's no youth strategy the government barely. We don't even in al tedor have an age that we say are youth. There's no real definition. I mean sixteen to twenty four you are considered a young person. But that's what we've been advocating and hustling for as a collective where the only youth housing and homeless collective and ul tedwer and we use that power of collective impact
to advocate for change. We have sat with ministers and said, you know, we need a youth strategy specific for dungcita Het because the research internationally is very clear we need to start with uncita heat if we were going to have any funds available, which by the way, this government has actually taken away twenty million dollars of the youth housing funding an altered wor put it towards ad Angitahi. Because there is the prevention there. You can make a
massive difference. That's what we're calling on this government and any other government that comes in the future and previous to do.
I mean, because how young are these kids who are living rough.
So we have a provider, the Pride Project that are out in many dwa. They are picking up young people from the bus stops and other places that are not wanting to go home, and they're eight or nine years old. It can vary. There's the whole you know, there's a whole massive continuum from actual children to young people. But as I said, you know, most young people are presenting anywhere from around thirteen years old up to twenty years old. Of course they can't come into youth housing it's only
for sixteen to twenty. But each youth housing provider has their own kind of criteria and youth housing is the place that we advocate for young people to come into and supported youth housing, not adult transitional housing. So a sixteen year old being an adult transitional housing. We've got all sorts of ages, typically mainly men and others. It's not a safe space d ang tahi to be.
So let me get this. There's no place if you were to pick up a thirteen year old in the middle of Auckland who has been sleeping rough, where would you take them? There's no where to take them.
Specifically, no that's the role of tapata Key.
So there's no youth housing situation. No, you must be so frustrated.
It is really frustrated because we don't have either a street outreach really that's looking for these for youth specific and that's one of the things that we're working with with HAD of course are responsible for home land business and you know those that are sleeping rough and altas, so we have been talking to them about having a youth street outreach. Earlier this year we went to the and presented at the first Preventing Youth Homelessness conference ever
in the world. We were the only New Zealand delegates that went and you know presented there and everywhere has youth street outreach you know emergency youth facilities. You know they're tackling and actually acknowledged that there's a problem with youth homelessness. We have really yet to have this government or subsequent governments actually acknowledged we have a youth housing problem.
Or even just a conversation about it.
Kilda Kilder, that's right. We did have a Homelessness Minister that with this government that has been taken away and that just falls under the portfolio of Tammer Pautucker. When we have Madame and Davidson in that role, we made great advances actually, and that's where we were able to have more youth housing than that's ever been seen in Old set all. But we still have massive parts of the country that have no youth housing available. So from Westokland right up to the top of the North there
is nothing for Angitahi, nothing suitable, nothing specific. We've got Napier that had massive floods and that really impacted on the housing situation there. They've got no youth housing. We've got far no living intents with children with respiratory issues. We get all sorts of you know, problems and stories
and crisis coming through here. I think what's important to remember is that Leilani Faja, who is the un housing that raptur, came here in twenty twenty twenty, I think it was twenty twenty or twenty one and she announced that New Zealand is having not a housing crisis but a human rights crisis. So you can't advance. I mean, it's very rich for the government to be calling on
young people must work, work, work. It's very hard to go to work when you don't have safe, warm, dry, secure housing, to have a good night's sleeping and to advance yourself.
If you were to change something tomorrow, no questions asked. There's a money tree out the back. What would you do?
Money tree out the back. Actually, I had one of the ministers say to me, look, if I gave you thirty million dollars, what would you do. It's not just about increasing the youth housing supply, because we could build five thousand more houses tomorrow and that's not going to do everything. Yes, the housing supply is really important, but we need to have a strategy as a country. We need to look at putting funding into prevention. We need
to have research and data. You know, there's a whole lot of things that we could do and too of healing for our young people. I mean, I would want to actually redevelop the whole system and look at all the drivers of young people into homelessness and how we can actually prevent and stop that, you know, plug up
the gaps. I mean I talked in a previous interview that we actually need to devolve a lot of our state kind of systems that look after young people into the community into MADI housing specific housing providers and make
it so that it's easy to access support. So it's I think, yes, we need to put some money towards it, but we all need to come together, all of the ministries, all of the ministers and having across party support about how we're actually going to do something effective about this issue.
And from the kid's point of view as well. I actually ask them exactly.
Our angatahi and that ang a tahi that I've spoken to are very political and very politically astute, and they have solutions. They have spoken to politicians, some of them and shared their story, and you know, they want to prevent other young people going into the streets and experiencing what they have had to experience. I mean, one night of rough sleeping. I don't know if you've ever had to you know, you've been locked out of your house, or ever had to sleep a little bit rough, will
sleep in your car. It's a terrible, terrible night, one that most people will never forget. And what we say is one night is one night too many of having to sleep rough.
Thanks for joining us, Bianca.
You're welcome. Thank you for having me Kilda.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can Read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at nsidherld, dot co, dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who was also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.