1 December 2025

The State of the Street is the first report of its kind, giving voice to the experiences of young people and children experiencing homelessness in Aotearoa. State of the Street is an SOS to Government, decision makers, and to the community at large. Youth Homelessness is a crisis, and it is escalating.

Our young people are staunch in their belief that every young person deserves a safe and stable home and that Youth Homelessness is a problem we can solve. This crisis is escalating, and it is time to act.

“It is crazy we have to show people evidence of our suffering for them to believe us… and even that isn’t enough for decision-makers to do something” – Wāhine Māori 19 years old

Kick Back supported about 160 young people through The Front Door in our first year and we expect this to rise to at least 200 young people before the end of the year. Of those we were able to support 60% identified as rangatahi māori, 8% identified as tangata moana, and about 8% were from migrant communities. A variety of housing experiences were reported with 22% of our rangatahi sleeping rough when they first sought Kick Back’s support, 22% couch surfing, 12% sleeping in their car, and 27% living in some form of unstable, overcrowded, or insecure housing situation. For 30% of our young people we were able to intervene early (within their first 2 weeks of experiencing homelessness), and 53% were experiencing homelessness within Auckland Central before accessing our services, highlighting that the city centre remains a key place were young people come when they are in crisis, and also that due to this, there is a key opportunity for early intervention.

Through building strong partnerships, working alongside MSD, friendly landlords and other transitional and supportive housing providers, Kick Back has been able to intervene early, providing swift access to shelter (in some cases supporting young people to move from street to shelter within an hour of receiving an initial request for support).

Notably 62% of all young people seeking Kick Back’s support were under 19 yrs of age. A significant portion of these young people were 16 & 17 yrs old (20%) and Tamariki (17% 15 yrs and under).

Kick Back has served a concerning number of children experiencing homelessness or facing housing insecurity. As highlighted above, 17% of all young people Kick Back has served are tamaraki (under 15), in some cases these children have been sleeping rough, couch surfing, living in dangerous and unstable housing environments, and struggling to gain access to the support they require. Kick Back has found that there is no immediate housing service designed to meet the needs of children experiencing homelessness and that Government cuts across the Public and Community sector have meant slower response times and less capacity to act in order to support our tamariki.

“Homelessness is dangerous for young people and children. Kick Back is extremely concerned about the growing number of tamariki and rangatahi coming through our front doors every week. This is a crisis, it is growing, it is time to act.” Says Aaron Hendry, Kick Back’s co-founder and General Manager.

The report, which is the first of what will become an Annual Report giving voice to the experiences of our young people experiencing homelessness, calls for Central and Local Government to act with urgency to bring an end to this crisis and identifies key opportunities to do so.

“There are some very clear decisions our Government can make if they are serious about ensuring the safety of our children. We do not have time to wait! Youth Homelessness is a problem we can solve. It’s time we solved it!”

The State of the Street identifies 6 key actions the Government can make in response to this crisis:

1. Roll back Emergency Housing reforms and invest in Immediate Housing Solutions
2. Implement Duty to Assist Legislation to clarify the states obligation to provide essential support to people at-risk of homelessness
3. Implement legislation to prevent young people being transitioned from state care into homelessness
4. Review the Youth Services contract and ensure providers are equipped to provide intensive supports to rangatahi on the Youth Payment
5. Build more Public Housing and give Kainga Ora a mandate to House The People

“Every young person deserves a safe and stable home. Our children are our taonga, we can build an Aotearoa where every child has a place to call home, where all our whānau have access to secure, stable and affordable housing. Homelessness does not need to exist, we can end this, together.” – Aaron Hendry

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