Home is Where It The Heart Is, it’s a unique photographic exhibition held during National Homeless Person week.
Young people affected by homelessness are teamed up with mentor to create a series of photographs that depict what home means to them. Now in its fourth year the exhibition has been noted for the positive experience it provides to young people and the honesty within the images created.
This year eight participants have been involved creating ten prints each. The profits from the sale of the prints provide additional funding to services that assist homeless youth. The exhibition draws attention to the significant challenge many young people in Western Australia face.
For eighteen year old Andrea, participating in the project has allowed her to and revisit places from her life that remind her of the theme of home and explore her interest in photography.
‘It’s something I’ve always liked doing, but I’ve never had the opportunity to use really good cameras, so finally I was asked to be part of this project and it’s been great.
‘Playing around with the light and exposure and angles, it’s interesting, I learned a lot from Chad who was my photographer. He was really good.’
Andrea, now lives in a youth accommodation service. The service provides her with a unit to live in which she shares with another person in the same accommodation program. The Home Is Where Your Heart Is project has allowed her to explore her interest in photography and writing, something she’s keen to do more of in the future.
In Western Australia youth homelessness is significant and young people face several challenges, explains Craig Comrie, Executive Officer of Youth Affairs Council of Western Australia,
‘The main two [challenges] I would say are access to services and affordable housing. Unfortunately with the first one, nine out of ten young people who approach a facility looking for a bed for the night are turned away because there is a lack of beds in W.A.
‘We’ve got something like 20,000 people on the public housing waiting list. So it can be three or four years before people have a house of their own. The private rental market in Western Australia is not particularly accessible to people who don’t have a full time job. It’s particularly hard for people who have had a period of homelessness to gain a rental property. Young people in general are not looked on very favorably.’
Comrie highlights that most people’s idea of being homeless is people living on the street, but the true definition is much broader.
‘ A good proportion of young people are living in boarding houses or crisis accommodation… couch surfing or moving amongst friends houses, either night by night or month by month and they are classed as homeless as they don’t have stable accommodation.’
Same sex attracted youth make up a significant part of this population. Studies have suggested anywhere between thirty and fifty percentage of homeless youth are gay. In Craig Comrie’s experience the main reasons are youth leaving are a hostile environment where their sexuality is not accepted or that they don’t feel comfortable in that environment.’
The large proportion of LGBT homeless youth has been brought to the attention of successive state governments. In 2001, a government-funded taskforce for homelessness in WA identified ‘gay, lesbian and transgender’ people to be one of the groups at most risk of homelessness. The State Homelessness Taskforce also found that young LGT people were at the ‘greatest risk’ of homelessness.
Five years later, the Perth Inner City Youth Service, a service for young people followed up with their own report addressing the experiences of 10 homeless LGBT youths. Closets in SAAP found LGBT youth had mixed reviews about emergency accommodation in WA. Six of the ten young people said they had felt unsafe due to perceived or actual homophobia from other users of supported accommodation.
This week the Minister for Child Protection, Robyn McSweeney defended the government’s progress in addressing homeless in the state highlighting a $135million spending program that is halfway through its implementation. Among the areas being addressed by increased funding is the building of a youth focused facility for people aged 16-25 and an additional 110 workers in non-government agencies being funded.
Graeme Watson
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