Kick Back, a youth development and social justice community responding to Youth Homelessness, is calling for urgent action to address Tamariki and rangatahi homelessness.

Kick Back is concerned about the Government's decision not to invest in a specific response to tamariki and youth homelessness in Budget 2025.

With winter coming, and the crisis of homelessness escalating, the Government could have decided to invest in a bold and comprehensive strategy to prevent and end youth homelessness.

Instead, the Government's decision to invest more resources into Boot Camps and child prisons, while pulling more funding from Emergency Housing, and choosing not to invest in housing and crisis support services for children and young people, reveals a clear decision to allow prisons to remain this Government's solution for kids experiencing homelessness.

"By choosing Boot Camps and investment in the children's prison system, the Government is choosing to allow the justice system to be the solution for children experiencing homelessness." Says Aaron Hendry Kick Back's Co-founder and General Manager. "Kick Back is meeting an increasing number of children experiencing homelessness, these kids are forced into conflict with the law simply because they don't have access to their basic human needs, such as housing, kai and a safe place to sleep."

Kick Back is concerned that the ongoing cuts to Public and Community Services is limiting the resources available for our children and putting some of our most vulnerable kids at risk of harm.

The growing number of people sleeping rough, and young people and children walking through Kick Back's doors, is not an accident. Kick Back is currently monitoring over 140 children and young people and has significant concerns that the crisis of youth homelessness is escalating.

Homelessness is a political choice. If the Government had wanted to begin working towards ending youth homelessness in Aotearoa they could have taken meaningful steps to address this growing crisis in Budget 2025. Such as:

• Rolling back their Emergency Housing and Welfare reforms to ensure everyone can access the support they need
• Investing in developing a strategy to prevent and end youth homelessness
• Committing to developing #Duty2Assist legislation to ensure no one is denied access to shelter when they needed
• Reinvesting the 20million dollars, cut from the last budget, back into building youth specific housing projects
• Committing to prioritizing young people on the Public Housing list and developing a strong Public Housing build plan
• Investing in Immediate Housing and Crisis services to replace motel-based Emergency Housing

"The crisis is escalating! Winter is coming! More and more children and young people are at-risk of homelessness and our Government has chosen not to respond." Says Aaron Hendry, Kick Back's Co-Founder and General Manager, "Instead of investing in our kids safety and ensuring all our children have access to safe and stable housing this Winter the Government has decided that the solution for children sleeping on our streets, for youth homelessness, is to invest in prisons for children."

Kick Back calls on the Government to listen to the voices of rangatahi and tamariki experiencing homelessness and to act urgently to respond to this crisis!

"Without urgent action the lives of some of our most vulnerable children and young people will be put at-risk this winter! The Government must act now to prevent any more of our kids sleeping rough this winter! We can end youth homelessness, we are in this mess because of political decisions, the Hope is in the fact that we can make different ones."

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