August 04, 2022
Trust becomes youth housing provider
The founder of a south Auckland kaupapa Māori trust hopes Homelessness Minister Marama Davidson can help it get the resources it needs to tackle youth homelessness.
Mā Te Huruhuru offers work readiness, enterprise, suicide prevention, Covid-19 response and music programmes for rangatahi, most of whom come from gang backgrounds.
Māhera Maihi says the Covid-19 response opened her eyes to the estimated 11,000 homeless young people in Tāmaki Makaurau, and the trust responded by developing a 10-unit housing complex in Otahuhu.
It struggles to get the resources it needs out of the Ministry for Housing and Urban Development and the Ministry for Social Development.
“There’s no mapping for this. There’s no one who has previously navigated their way through this who can give us an easy, step-by-step process about how you traverse through that pathway of becoming a youth housing provider,”
Ms Maihi says.
Working through the Manaaki Rangatahi collective Mā Te Huruhuru was able to raise the issues with Minister Davidson and get youth added to the Government’s homelessness action plan – but it still has to fight to access those resources and show the value of a kaupapa Māori organisation.