4 days ago
Open Letter: Prime Minister, Youth Homelessness Is A Crisis, Our Friends Are Suffering, We Need Your Help To End This
Kia ora Prime Minister,
We are writing to you with heavy hearts and deep anger. This year, we lost two of our brothers. They were young men, full of life and potential, but they died without a safe and stable home. This is unacceptable.
We believe the government's failure to provide adequate and affordable housing directly contributed to their deaths. They were not alone; many others in our community struggle daily to find a place to call home, a place to feel safe and secure.
The lack of affordable housing is a crisis, and its costing lives. Our brothers were not just statistics; they were loved sons, brothers, and friends. Their deaths are a devastating loss to our family and our community.
We need action, not just words. We need real solutions to the housing crisis that will prevent more tragedies like this from happening again. We need homes, not empty promises.
We urge you to listen to our pain, to understand the urgency of this situation, and to take immediate steps to address the lack of affordable housing in our community. The lives of our brothers, and the lives of countless others, depend on it. We need help, and we need it now. We demand action to prevent more families from suffering the same devastating loss we have endured.
Prime Minister we are calling on you to act urgently to respond to this crisis by:
Rolling back the Emergency Housing reforms and Sanction Policies which have increased the risk of homelessness for our friends and our community
Implement #Duty2Assist Legislation to clarify the states responsibility to support people and to ensure that that every young person who reaches out to W&I for support with housing is able to access that support
Activate a fast release fund to support community organizations responding to the crisis our tamariki and rangatahi are facing, with a focus on prioritizing investment into alternative models to motels-based Emergency Housing
Develop and resource a strategy to end and prevent tamariki and rangatahi homelessness
Commit to scaling up a Public Housing build program and ensure Kāinga Ora has a mandate to #HouseThePeople and prioritize housing for young people.
This crisis is urgent, our people are suffering, our friends are dying, we need our Government to act! The Rangatahi of Kick Back would like to invite you to come and hui with us at The Front Door, to that you can better understand the crisis we are experiencing and to discuss how we can work together to bring this crisis to an end.
Ngā mihi,
