Kick Back, a Youth Development and Social Justice
organization responding to Youth Homelessness, is calling on
all political Party’s to come together to form a bipartisan
accord to end rough sleeping by Christmas.
Over the
last few weeks media have reported the deaths of four of our
whānau who it is believed have died as a result of
experiencing homelessness.
In August last year, Kick
Back warned the Government in an open letter to the
Prime Minister that the Government’s decision’s to restrict
access to Emergency Housing were putting the lives of young
New Zealander’s at risk and increasing the risk of rough
sleeping among young people.
With the homelessness
crisis escalating, Kick Back is calling for urgent,
bipartisan action!
“We’ve gone beyond the crisis
point, people are dying because they are sleeping outside
and have nowhere safe to live! How is this acceptable to us?
In a country as wealthy as New Zealand no one should be
sleeping outside!” Says Aaron Hendry, General Manager of
Kick Back.
Kick Back is calling on Parliament to
follow the UK
Prime Minister’s leadership and work together to ensure
everyone sleeping rough is provided shelter before
Christmas.
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“We can fix this!” Says Hendry, “We can
ensure no one is left outside this Christmas, but we must
act now!”
Kick Back is calling on the Government to
work across the house to ensure that no one is left outside
this Christmas.
To achieve this the Government could
immediately:
1. Commit to ending rough sleeping by
Christmas and direct relevant officials to work towards
achieving this goal
2. Roll back the current Emergency
Housing policy to ensure that everyone who needs shelter is
able to access it
3. Form a National and Regional crisis
response rōpū with ministerial oversite. The crisis
response rōpū would be made up of key official’s, experts
and community leaders who can begin working together to
identify and address the structural challenges contributing
to homelessness at both a national and regional level.
4.
Commit to increasing Immediate Housing services and work
with current Transitional Housing providers to transition to
Immediate Access
5. Introduce a crisis response fund to
support outreach and crisis response services to scale to
match the need.
6. Introduce #Duty2Assist legislation to
clarify ensure that noone
“We know homelessness is a
political choice. We have seen this over the last few years,
as key political decisions have escalated this crisis
resulting in more of our friends and whānau being forced to
sleep outside in the cold. The hope here is that we can make
different ones.
No one has to sleep outside in the
cold. We can fix this!” – Aaron
Hendry
