An Auckland youth housing group is calling the 2024 Budget funding cuts for rangatahi housing a catastrophe.
Twenty million dollars of funding previously marked for youth transitional housing projects was scrapped in this year’s government budget.
“The budget cuts are diabolical and we are in a housing crisis,” Mā Te Huruhuru Charitable Trust founder and chief executive Mahera Maihi says.
“We are in a people and resource management crisis.”
Maihi and her team run He Pā Piringa in Otahuhu – transitional housing for rangatahi Māori.
Their 52-week programme caters to rangatahi aged 17-21 years old.
The aim is to keep young people off the streets and put them into safe housing, something Maihi holds close to her heart as she reflects on her own experience with homelessness.
“I was homeless myself growing up,” she says.
“I was raised in gang families, raised in South Auckland, disconnected from my culture, and I knew that that was not gonna be my future. ”
A recent study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found Aotearoa had one of the highest rates of homelessness in the developed world, with more than two per cent of New Zealanders recorded as being homeless by one definition (according to 2018 Census data). Other research suggests half of the country’s homeless population is under the age of 25.
However, Maihi says homelessness can start at any age.
“You can be born into it,”
“What is there for those young people? They’ve taken away $20 million intended for them and they’ve put it back into mainstream. That’s not fair, that’s not equitable and that doesn’t solve the problem”.
Zeta Selwyn (Ngāpuhi) is one of 18 youth staying in these whare (houses). She was living in her car before moving to He Pā Piringa this year.
“I was heartbroken. I felt like I wasn’t wanted [by] my parents. I felt devastated and hurt,” she says.
However, the 17 year-old says moving into the pā (facility) has been an empowering experience.
“This is [where] I wanna be. his is the place where [I] have the skills to adapt in life”.
Selwyn says she is angry at the government’s funding reallocation, emphasising the importance of programmes like He Pā Piringa for homeless rangatahi.
“If you take that away from us you’re taking our knowledge, our power, our strength,”
“We can’t sit around here you know dwelling on our badness, going back to drugs and alcohol addictions.”
While Maihi says this funding cut does not directly impact her housing programme, that doesn’t diminish the severity of the situation and the growing number of homeless youth.
“We’ve got young people with foetal alcohol syndrome, with PTSD, with ADHD.
“These young people don’t have the skills right now to cope with stressful times so they resort back to gangs, they resort back to the easy road.”
Kaimahi say the point of difference with this initiative is their focus on te ao Māori (Māori world view).
Activities include learning waiata, pūrākau, whakapapa and reconnecting with their cultural heritage. Additionally, the youth are involved in sports, driver license courses and other programmes to equip them for life outside of the pā.
Pou tikanga Morehu Kara says a lot of the youth that come through their doors have not been immersed in their Māori culture.
“Ko te nuinga he tauhou.”
(Most of them are unfamiliar with [their culture])
“Ēngari ka tūwhera o rātau nei ngākau ki te uru mai ki roto i tēnei wāhi, ki te ako i ngā tāonga o [ngā] mātua tūpuna.
(But their hearts are open to come here and learn about the treasures of our ancestors.)
Maihi says in addition to more funding needed for these programmes, the solution lies within Māori cultural practices.
“Rongoā Māori not just as medicine but the whole context of what Māori solutions are – Māori frameworks, Māori policies, Māori ways of living, traditional Māori practices.
“We have to go back to the Māori solutions because what’s good for Maori is good for all and nothing about us without us.”
The current intake of rangatahi at the pā will complete their programme in 2025.