#52 - Bianca Johanson - Youth homelessness in New Zealand

In this episode, we meet Bianca Johanson — Chief Executive of Manaaki Rangatahi, the national collective working to prevent and end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. Bianca is a social worker of nearly thirty years, and someone for whom, by the statistics, homelessness should have been a personal outcome. She was transracially adopted in the closed stranger adoption era, born Māori and raised by a Pākehā whānau. The disconnection from whakapapa, from culture, from the knowledge of where she came from — is something she has spent her career working to prevent in others. In this episode, Bea talks about what she found when she went out and listened to the youth homelessness sector in Tāmaki — competitive, fragmented, and in places actively hostile — and what it took to build something different. She talks about what a young person homeless tonight in Aotearoa actually encounters, why rangatahi are not even making it to the receptionist at MSD, and what Manaaki Rangatahi is calling for: a national youth homelessness strategy, supported youth housing with standards, a Duty to Assist, and rangatahi voice embedded in everything. And she talks about the goal — 2040, no youth homelessness — and why the collective is not waiting for permission. We'd like to thank Bianca for taking the time to speak with us for this episode.And don't forget to subscribe to the CHA Hub Podcast — wherever you get your podcasts from.The CHA Hub Podcast is sponsored by our Founding Partner, Westpac New Zealand.