95bFM Concerns that youth homelessness is not addressed in Budget 2025
4 June, 2025
Interview by Joel Armstrong, adapted by Vivek Panchal
Last month, Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, announced the 2025 Budget.
Concerns have been raised over the lack of funding to combat youth homelessness and surrounding services, while also removing $1 billion for emergency accommodation, funding $33 million over four years for youth boot camps, and tightening the criteria for 18-to-19-year-olds to receive Jobseeker Support and Emergency Benefits.
Co-founder and general manager of Kick Back; a NGO centred around youth development and social justice, Aaron Hendry, told 95bFM’s The Wire that the lack of funding allocated to tackle youth homelessness is disappointing.
“[These are] children that we see daily who are at risk, whose lives are at risk, who are in really serious danger, and it's a crisis that is escalating. We would have expected in this budget that the government would have recognised that and started to respond.”
He says due to the lack of funding for other social and community services there will be fewer available resources to help and support youth in need.
Aaron criticises the government’s priorities regarding the $1 billion cut in funding for emergency accommodation.
“[The government] could have invested in immediate housing services specific for children and young people to replace the motel accommodation model. They could have invested in youth housing services, such as, you know, the youth housing projects, you know, $20 billion, which they cut from the last budget.”
Hendry says boot camps for young people do not solve the issues that youth face; instead, they should be making more investments to try to reduce the number of at-risk rangatahi.
“We need to ensure that these children have the care and love and support they need so they do not need to come into conflict with the law in the first place.”
“What we forget often when we talk about youth crime is that the first victims are these kids. Often these kids have been neglected.”
He says there are models that the governments could look into to come up with plans to tackle youth homelessness and provide additional support to young people rough sleeping, citing Kick Back as an example.
“With Kick Back, we run the Front Door, which is for young people who are in crisis, ensuring there's a central place for young people to turn up, get support, get access to health care, to mental health support, and then navigate the housing system.”
Hendry would like to see the government invest in legislation surrounding the Youth and Child Homelessness Prevention Strategy to ensure no child gets denied help and support, while also investing more in emergency housing so that when someone does need shelter, they can access it swiftly.
“Homelessness is a political decision, and this budget just illustrates that very clearly for all of us. We can make different decisions. We can ensure that all of our children and our young people have access to safe and stable housing, but we've got to start making better decisions for our kids and our communities.”
