There is a tendency to believe youth homelessness does not exist, so it is not properly funded, writes Phil Kerry, chief executive of New Horizon Youth Centre, as part of Inside Housing and Homeless Link’s Reset Homelessness campaign. One of the young people at New Horizon Youth Centre once asked me if their age entitled them to a 25% discount off everything they ever had to buy: their bills, their food and even their rent. The answer was of course no, but I could see why they thought it.
As a young person, the stated minimum wage for their pay was less. Their Universal Credit was 26% less and because they needed housing benefit and were under the age of 35, they also found that was less – almost half of what mine would be in fact. People are often surprised when they hear the dud hand that young people are dealt financially, but become more so when they realise, they don’t benefit legally from being young either. If a person is under 18, they are under care of the state, but as soon as they turn 18, they are on their own.