Youth homeless crisis
Children as young as 10 turning to shelters for help
Children as young as 10 are increasingly presenting to Tasmanian shelters with nowhere to go, and housing stakeholders are urging the state and federal governments to take urgent action.
Colony 47 CEO Dianne Underwood said children and young people experienced homelessness differently to adults.
“We do see people as young as 10 come to us … turning up with no parents with them,” Ms Underwood said.
“At the moment at our crisis shelter, we have a huge amount of 12-year-olds, which is different to what we’ve seen in the past.
“This is also a care crisis, not just a housing crisis for young people, young people need support, you can’t just put them in a social house.
“They need people around them giving them support to re-engage with their education, help them with their employment, actually help them get mental health and medical support and that connection back when they’ve trauma.”
On Youth Homelessness Matters Day, housing stakeholders hoped to send a message to governments to take more action.
“We believe there are about 1000 young people who are homeless today in Tasmania, which is a really shameful to community suffered deep problem,” Ms Underwood said. “They don’t have the resources, the social connections, they often have been couch surfing for 18 months before they even seek support.
“It could be they need help in reunifying with their family or we need to find extended family for them to stay with.
“If we don’t lean into this now, these young people will continue to ricochet off our different homelessness services and they’ll end up as homeless adults.”
Youth Network of Tasmania CEO Tania Hunt said a specific strategy was needed to tackle youth homelessness.
“We would like the government to invest in a dedicated co-ordinated age appropriate strategy for children and young people,” Ms Hunt said.
“Children and young people have unique housing challenges and they need age-appropriate responses and targeted responses.
“Essentially we have 39 per cent of Tasmania’s homeless population under the age of 25 years – they are over-represented in our state’s homeless population.
“We’re talking about young Tasmanians who have low or no income … Young people are unable to break into the private rental market.
“They are not prioritised for social housing either.”