Hidden in the shadows: 'Homeless youth at crisis point'

Friday, 20 August 2021

This time a year ago, social services kicked into high gear to rapidly get homeless people off the streets for lockdown. (Video first published March 2021)

Youth homelessness is a hidden problem, but advocates say it is a ‘’growing crisis’’ society can’t afford to ignore. VICKI ANDERSON reports.

The threat of Delta hit Aotearoa late Tuesday afternoon. Alert Level 4 loomed. While many New Zealanders prepared for lockdown, a small group in Tāmaki Makaurau rallied to find shelter for the city's ‘’hidden’’ homeless youth.

By Wednesday, streets across the nation were eerily deserted, doors firmly closed. But for one young rangatahi living on the street, a door to a new life finally opened.

Ahika was 15 when he fled a violence-filled home.

His grandmother took him in but he, ‘’got on the drugs’’.

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‘’I started fighting with my nana,’’ Ahika says, “I started going a bit loopy, she kicked me out into the garage.”

“There was no door, and it was cold in the middle of winter.’’

Then his mother died. He left the garage and moved to the streets of Auckland.

Aaron Hendry: “If we want to get serious about reducing crime than we need to take seriously our responsibility as a society to care for those we have structurally marginalised.”

A life on the street, hidden in the city's shadows with others like him, seemed safer than the alternative. Crime beckoned.

‘’Stealing,” Ahika says, “I ran out of opportunities. No-one wanted to know me at the time because of how I was. I was 15, 16, 17. I was couch-surfing, on the streets.”

‘’I was in boys' homes, like a full-on lockdown and youth justice. I was hit on the head, smacked over the side of the mouth at the boys' home…. I had bottles thrown at me. They put youth…trying to detox into the same place.’’

Now, he's a father to a three-month-old daughter, motivated by her to make a new start.

‘’She is my everything,” he says.

Aaron Hendry, youth housing team leader at Lifewise, spent the first day of lockdown this week moving furniture into a unit for Ahika.

The moment is bittersweet. Hendry knows for every rangatahi like Ahika, there are many more young homeless turned back to the street.

‘’Straight after we went into level 4 last year, a group of young people came into the office. They wanted help with housing,’’ says Hendry.

‘’We were able to turn to the over-18s and say yes we can get you a place tonight, there will be a motel we can find for you. But we had to turn to the young, vulnerable 16-year-old wahine and say sorry there's a chance we are turning you back onto the street. I'm a dad… there's no provision for the needs of young homeless.’’

This lockdown is no different.

If young homeless approach Work and Income or Oranga Tamariki there is ‘’no guarantee of assistance”, Hendry says.

‘’They might very well end up back on the streets or in a motel where they are at risk of abuse and be traumatised… It is not acceptable that there are children living on our streets, and we don't have any plan.’’

Youth homelessness has been an ‘’ignored issue for generations’’.

Census data collected in 2013 looked at the homeless population. More than 50 per cent of those experiencing severe housing deprivation were young people aged 16-24.

‘’In 2017 a strategy was started to address homelessness, but youth just weren't considered even though we knew they were the largest proportion of people experiencing it,’’ says Hendry.

‘’The services are not targeted to meet the needs of rangatahi. That gap is those who are unable to be housed. A big issue is a lack of acknowledgement they are experiencing this issue.’’

‘Sugar babies’ exploited

Dame Catherine Healey of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective says the ‘’precarious situation” of homeless youth who are sexually exploited or coerced is an area it is focusing on.

Homelessness support worker Neihana Gordon-Staples says rainbow youth suffered more challenges than ever during lockdown.

‘’They form relationships which are exploitative, but there is also this sugar baby, sugar daddy scenario which we are trying to highlight.

‘’We pick up on people coming out of those relationships and have had quite dire things happen.’’

Otago University Professor Gillian Abel, who has researched this topic since sex work was decriminalised, says young people in care need to be heard.

‘’There needs to be more relationship building, young people need to be involved in the decision-making about their lives. In terms of homelessness, there is not a lot out there for young people who land up on the street or emergency housing.

‘’It is about supporting services which can help these young people to have a place to stay at least without necessarily making them go back to the homes they have just run away from.’’

In Aotearoa, rainbow young people are more likely than their peers to experience homelessness, unsafe housing or unstable living situations.

During lockdown Neihana Gordon-Staples, a homelessness support worker at RainbowYOUTH says rainbow young people are ‘’facing further challenges relating to accessing financial assistance and safe and stable housing’’.

Lifewise is doing its best to house young, under-age homeless on Auckland's streets during lockdown.

He helps rainbow young people access safe and stable housing in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Most people he works with struggle to find services that are ‘’affirming and accessible for them’’.

‘’There is a huge lack of training and support for housing agencies to learn ways to work safely with rainbow young people.’’

Some challenges include shared facilities for multiple genders and ages in emergency housing, lack of access to appropriate mental health and wraparound support, and a general lack of awareness and understanding around their sexuality and/or gender identity.

Manaaki Rangatahi ki Tāmaki Youth Homelessness Collective was established in 2018.

It includes members from VOYCE Whakaronga Mai, Auckland City Mission, LifeWise, Strive Community Trust, RainbowYOUTH and VisionWest and is calling for an ‘’immediate and urgent action’’ to respond to youth homelessness.

It wants a strategy and legislation which would require governments or agencies to provide for rangatahi.

Who are the young people on our streets?

Often transient, an average homeless youth is 15 years old, and has run away from an unsafe home or state care facilities.

Since 2016, 100 young people have run away from Oranga Tamariki care and protection residences. The youngest was 10 years old.

Bianca Johanson is the co-ordinator of Manaaki Rangatahi ki Tāmaki Youth Homelessness Collective and a youth strategy and development co-ordinator at Lifewise.

A social worker for more than 23 years, she recalls recently helping a 15-year-old at a train station.

‘’Mum had given him $20 and dropped him off saying 'good luck',’’ she says. ‘’There just wasn't any room at home.

‘’There isn't a town in Aotearoa that isn't affected by homelessness now.’’

Shades of youth homelessness has been on our streets for ‘’decades’’ but since the housing crisis it is now ‘’way out of control’’.

‘’Dr Terryann Clark, who is part of our collective, estimates youth homelessness is at around 30,000 nationwide. That's the size of Timaru who are homeless. If there was a national disaster that left that many homeless, we wouldn't hear the end of it on the news.’’

The only person in Aotearoa who ‘’works full-time to end youth homelessness’’, Johanson says last year between the first and second lockdown, 200 kids were turned away.

‘’There is 120 supported youth living spots in Tāmaki Makaurau, 110 of those are Oranga Tamariki-funded.’’

If you are 16 and find yourself homeless there’s ‘’no public information on who to ring for help’’, she says.

‘’That is because there is nothing available, there is no-one to ring.”

Motels which do accept young homeless are often reluctant to accommodate young Māori males.

‘’That needs to be spoken about, it is hard for us to find somewhere for a young Māori male,” Johanson says.

Kararaina Calcott-Cribb Te Kāhui Kainga Ora deputy chief executive, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said it has worked with housing sector and contacted housing providers, iwi and Māori organisations to ‘’understand the need for accommodation or support requirements for people and whānau experiencing homelessness during Level 4’’.

People often say ‘’where are their parents?’’ but for many reasons young people can’t safely stay at home.

‘’We are picking up people, where we think they are at risk of being abused or becoming chronically homeless, where it becomes entrenched,’’ says Johanson. ‘’It's not a lifestyle choice.”

‘’Housing insecurity can be very traumatic. It can lead to wanting to end your life, addictions, poor relationships, there is limited great outcomes… Isolation and loneliness is a killer.’’

Often the stories she hears are heart-breaking.

Some kids end up pregnant and beaten on the street. Others become hooked on synthetic drugs.

‘’The children who are part of the Child Poverty Action Bill become teenagers. Ireland has legislation, we are fighting to have it here.’’

The Government should not be ‘’transitioning’’ young people out of any type of care, Johanson says.

‘’If they've been in care for most of their life, where are they supposed to go?’’

Most will ‘’rock up to Work and Income’’. They are then told to see a youth payment provider.

‘’It is a good system in terms of getting a youth mentor… but these rangatahi are turning up with no birth certificate, no income having been living in a car, rough sleeping under a bridge, staying in the bush,’’ says Johanson.

‘’In Auckland CBD, where Work and Income is on Queen St, you have to get to the youth payment provider in Ponsonby. How are you supposed to get there? It's a long walk. That is hard to navigate for a 16 or 17-year-old. On the way they walk down K Rd, decide to stay there and hustle for the night. Everything is not linear.’’

Simulata Pope of VOYCE, an advocate group for children and young people in care, says youth homelessness is an issue ‘’blanketed by other things including poverty, the housing crisis and inequality’’.

‘’We are a firm believer at VOYCE that youth homelessness numbers are very over-represented by kids in care.

‘’The average age is 15, as young as 12. We are starting to see 9 and 10-year-olds as well, absconding from placements…We are definitely finding those patterns where these young people who have had massive experience of breakdowns in placements early on in their life in care, can also have a pattern of going into homelessness because sometimes these young people are put into the too hard basket. Who wants to be responsible for the young person who runs away all the time?’’

The true number of homeless youth are huge and often uncounted, advocate Dame Sue Bagshaw says.

Young people who abscond from care have nowhere else to go, she says.

‘’The biggest thing is it is so sad the wider public and even Government don't recognise that young people find it safer and more supportive to be homeless than they do when they are looked after by the state.

‘’They would rather be out there on the street with friends and like-minded kids…obviously there is something wrong there.’’

Many young homeless people work together on the street. Some stay together in garages and help each other to survive.

’’Sometimes that culture of having to survive includes knowledge and tricks of the trade that aren't so nice,” says Pope, “Synthetics come into play.”

‘’There is great risk in older young people teaching younger ones to stay afloat on the streets… how to obtain help from social services is not the information they are sharing.’’

The problem of youth homelessness has been downplayed, Pope says, because there is a culture of ‘’believing there is no young people on the street’’ and a pervasive negative stereotype of teens.

‘’Because we can't capture the data doesn't mean it ain't happening. It is why youth homelessness has become so severe, it is so undocumented, not talked about and an issue no-one is exposed to unless you are literally out on the street.’’

In Aotearoa, someone under 18 can't legally have a tenancy agreement, something which displeases Christchurch GP and youth advocate Dame Sue Bagshaw.

Chair of the Youth Hub Trust, Bagshaw is aiming to build Te Hurihanga O Rangatahi in the central city, to provide support services for 10-25 year olds.

Christchurch youth in particular, living through earthquakes and the mosques shootings have a major problem with post-traumatic stress, she says.

‘’There are a load of reasons why young people end up homeless, escaping a home which has sexual or physical abuse, or being discharged from Oranga Tamariki, which causes a situation of the only place they can go is back to the family who caused the problem.

‘’Then there are people who make a declaration in terms of their identity or sexual orientation and that becomes the reason they must leave home. There are a variety of reasons. Sometimes the parents can't afford to keep them any longer.’’

She has heard ‘’terrible stories’’ from young people who are renting out garages for $200 a week.

People just ‘’write off young people’’ who are homeless, she says.

‘’They think they are just being rebellious…Some are living in a shed in a backyard. If you haven't got at least a toilet it's not proper housing, it's a hut.

‘’If you counted that as homeless, which I do, then the numbers affected are huge.’’

Dr Terryann Clark, registered nurse and associate professor at Auckland University's faculty of medical and health sciences, says conducted research in 2019 that found 29 per cent of secondary school students had experienced at least one type of housing deprivation.

‘’Many live in inadequate housing, don't have their own bed or space, 2 per cent are living in serious housing deprivation – emergency housing, living in cars…15 per cent say their families are often or always worried about paying housing costs.

‘’Since Covid, people know housing is so rare to come by, people are holding on to housing even if it is substandard poor housing because there aren't any other options.’’

Youth homelessness is a ‘’great unseen issue’’.

Red Ngaia-Setu, youth worker and case worker at the Youth Cultural Development centre in Christchurch.

‘’Youth don't bother to apply to housing providers because they don't think they meet the criteria. Because they don't bother to apply, they don't get counted.’’

Her research found that 10 per cent of students said their family had split up because their home was ‘’too small to accommodate everyone’’.

‘’I knew it was a big issue, but I hadn't realised families were being split up over it. Housing deprivation is entwined with poverty. We just need to give people more money, so they can live with dignity, to pay their rent’’

University of Otago researcher Louisa Choe spent more than two years following 12 women aged between 15-18 years-old to discover their experiences of housing instability.

Her research was recently published in a paper in the New Zealand Population Review, and detailed the ways young people ‘’become evicted from childhood’’.

‘’One of my study participants, her family was evicted, so she had to live with relatives,” Choe says.

Ngaia-Setu, left, and youth worker and mentor Philip Nuú. Nuú leads a group of kids called the Barbarians and teaches barbering skills to kids at the centre.

“It was already overcrowded with cousins, aunties and other relatives, a lack of privacy prompted her to run away.’’

Another young person ran away from home because she ‘’didn't want to be a burden’’ to her struggling family.

‘’Housing instability is entwined with poverty, food insecurity, power insecurity.’’

It's a familiar story to Christchurch youth workers Red Ngaia-Setu and Philip Nuú at Youth and Cultural Development.

‘’I was a young person here, one of the first ones to come through YCD, then I started working here 16 years ago,’’ says Nuú.

Setu nods. His life has followed a similar path: ‘’I've been here 17 years.’’

The youth non-profit organisation for at-risk youth once housed Pacific Underground and saw the likes of Dallas Tamaira of Fat Freddy's Drop, Ladi6 and Scribe move through its creative drama and music classes at the drop-in centre.

‘’We run specialist youth services for people caught up in the youth justice system.’’

Setu runs the family home project for young people who require care and protection while moving into a long term Oranga Tamariki placement.

‘’Through the year we see maybe 100 kids, in those family homes.’’

Youth queue around the block once a month to attend YCD’s free Fresh event – they dance, eat free food and get free haircuts from a group of young people, including two Shirley Boys’ high students training with Nuú to be barbers.

They call themselves The Barbarians.

‘’The big thing for me is seeing mums come in with their kids, drop them off, food, drink and a haircut in a safe environment,’’ says Setu. ‘’It’s hard to get all the kids hair cuts at the one time for many families. What a haircut can do for a young person – you see them walk out with smiles.’’

To go from homeless to a safe place to sleep and a job is more than some dare to imagine.

Ahika appreciates a warm, safe place to sleep during lockdown.

With warmth in his voice he talks about his grandfather, a farmer in Canterbury, and his own future plans.

He loves boats and the ocean. His dream is to become a fisherman and cast a fresh start into the world, inspired by his baby daughter.

But his mind is also on the young people who remain on our streets tonight.

‘’You all need to do something, there needs to be more help… don't leave them kids out there.’’