Homeless youth crisis

Youth homelessness is at crisis point according to a Salvation Army 
report, called Broken Dreams. It shows that more than 100,000 young 
people experience homelessness each year in Australia.

The Salvos say that there is a shortage of emergency accommodation and that 
the number of young people with nowhere to sleep at night is on the rise.

There are now 50,000 homeless youth on any one night, compared to 36,000 in 
1994 and 19,000 in 1991. Youth homelessness is approaching the crisis 
levels of the late 1980s which prompted a national inquiry by the then 
Human Rights Commissioner, Brian Burdekin.

Measures adopted by federal and state governments in response to the 
Burdekin inquiry were for a time effective in reducing homelessness, but 
that effect has now worn off.

The Salvation Army's Captain David Eldridge says that the increase was due 
to high rates of youth unemployment; a shortage in the private rental 
market; `gentrification' of the inner suburbs leading to a reduction in the 
number of rooming houses; tightening of eligibility for government 
benefits; family breakdown; and a decline in public housing.

The Olympics will see Sydney rents go through the roof and will force low-
income families to the outer city fringes and throw more young people onto 
the streets.

The anti-people policies of the Howard Government are placing financial 
barriers to a proper education, reducing study benefits to young people 
under the Common Youth Allowance, reducing eligibility for social security, 
exploiting young workers by maintaining a youth wage, loss of award 
conditions and increased job insecurity. All these developments will 
aggravate youth homelessness.

The Salvos' report says that 80 per cent of homeless youth come from broken 
families and the Burdekin Report cited strong links between family poverty 
and youth homelessness. 

Poverty often contributes to drug and alcohol problems, social isolation 
and domestic violence — which may compel a young person to leave home. 

The answer of some governments is to build more prisons, the latest being 
the proposal of the Victorian Government to build a private prison 
specifically for juvenile detention. This scandalous plan is touted to be a 
"training centre" — in fact, a centre for cheap labour for employers.

The policies of present governments need to be fought if the problem of 
youth homelessness and the associated crime, prostitution, drug addiction 
and suicide, are to be seriously tackled and not swept into the prison 
system.