Big Hearts for Tiny Homes - Youth Homelessness campaign
“Every tiny act helps us address homelessness.”
Just because you don’t see people sleeping rough in our streets doesn’t mean our local community is immune to the problem. Noosa-Sunshine Coast is a popular holiday destination, but a tough place to live for many young people to settle due to extreme housing costs, low average wages, social housing shortage and high rental competition.
Add to this, COVID-19 impacts of business closures, unemployment and health concerns, 2020/21 has seen more local people and particularly young people experiencing homelessness.
To achieve Youturn’s long-term vision of strengthening our community by tackling youth homelessness on the Sunshine Coast, we set our sights on an initiative to provide more access to stable and affordable housing for young people by raising funds to invest and build Tiny Homes. This project would be a value-add to our government funded Specialist Homelessness Services.
Working closely with Noosa Council, who has been extremely supportive of this initiative, we have identified that the best position for our tiny homes is the land next door to the Tait Duke Cottage Community Support Centre at at Earl Street, Tewantin.
UPDATE: Since launching our “Big Hearts for Tiny Homes” initiative in 2020 to tackle youth homelessness on the Sunshine Coast, we have managed to raise enough to build our first TWO tiny homes! The deposits have been paid and Aussie Tiny Houses have commenced with the builds, with an expected delivery of September 2021!
We commit that 100% of the funds raised will go directly to the Big Hearts for Tiny Homes which is a value-add to our government funded specialist homelessness services which is around social support, not infrastructure. We see the two go hand in hand.
Youturn Youth Support is a home grown, local Sunshine Coast charity based at Tewantin that was started over 30 years ago to deliver local impact and help address youth homelessness in the region. Our humble beginnings started as a grass roots youth homelessness project in 1989 with the Noosa Accommodation Project (NAP), which was originally started by 5 volunteers supporting six young people.
Since then, the organisation has grown substantially working with young people and those that support them, expanding our focus to include child safety, homelessness and mental health. Today our organisation has grown to include a team of 160 employees and last year we supported over 8600 young people.
Youturn is well positioned to respond to youth issues across our communities and we believe our strength is the provision of wrap-around holistic support, leading to transformative benefits to young people, their families and in turn building resilient communities.
