2026-04-15
Quotes attributable to Laura Nuttall MLA, ACT Greens Spokesperson for Young People
The day after Canberra marked Youth Homelessness Matters Day, the ACT Government still can’t tell us what their plans to actually youth homelessness are.
Yesterday young people who've gone homeless worked with advocates and frontline workers to organise an annual Youth Homelessness Matter day event. They shared their experiences and asked us decision makers to genuinely do what it takes to end youth homelessness across the ACT. They made clear they need us to act.
So what has Canberra actually done since the last annual Youth Homelessness Matters Day? To put it nicely; not enough.
We have lost crisis accommodation for young people. We used to have 24 crisis beds across the ACT; we're now down to only 18. Across Australia, almost 1 in 3 young people leaving Out of Home Care experience homelessness within the first year. This is unacceptable.
But we still don’t know the whole story. The Government cannot tell us how many young people are seeking support for homelessness each night in the ACT. Government does not know the scale of the need in front of them, and they don’t have a strategy to understand it and respond appropriately.
We do know that youth foyers like Our Place in Braddon are a proven model. But last year, the government threw Our Place residents into deep uncertainty when they wouldn’t tell them whether funding would continue past the end of the financial year. Now, the new Woden Youth Foyer still isn't operational despite the government promising it would be 9 months ago.
It should be the most uncontroversial thing in the world to say that every young person deserves a safe, comfortable home. But in practice, so many young people are being left behind and are left to hope that across the city, at least one service will be able to take them in.
The ACT Government must develop a comprehensive strategy to tackle youth homelessness in this city. Our most vulnerable young people cannot continue to fall through the cracks in the system.