Kickstarter Campaign: Homes for Homeless Youth
New endeavour aims to create homes for homeless youth
Most of us take for granted having a roof over our heads and the support of family and friends around us. Unfortunately this is not the case for around 40,000 young Australians who find themselves without a home each night.
A new design endeavour aims to create an uplifting, light-filled, nurturing environment – a benchmark in replicable and sustainable design – in which homeless young people can be sheltered and nurtured.
Andrew Milward-Bason and Greg Pitts, directors of Melbourne-based architecture and design studio, Urban Creative, are lending their skills to support the program. Together they are leading a fundraising campaign which will enable the first of many of these homes to be constructed.
The aim is to construct a number of homes for homeless youth, initially in Victoria and then, hopefully, in capital cities and rural centres across Australia.
There has been a groundswell of awareness about this issue lately. We started to think about the needs of the young people. The most basic need is a place to heal and recover from the trauma of their experience of living rough on the streets or fleeing a home setting in which they have been neglected and abused. And sadly there is a shortage of such places.
With over 40,000 young people homeless each night in Australia, it is time we did something about it.
Andrew Milward-Bason, Urban Creative director
Having worked across a range of award winning projects in Australia and internationally, Greg and Andrew established Urban Creative with a focus on urban intensification and sustainable infill development, and a passion for pursuing best outcomes for the community.
It was this shared passion for innovation and community outcomes that lead Greg and Andrew to become involved with housing for homeless youth.
How will these homes be structured?
Each home will be bespoke-designed to house 4 youths and 2 live-in carers, together forming a family unit.
The homes will be designed to provide an uplifting, light-filled, nurturing environment and will be a benchmark in sustainable design.
Arranged in clusters of 4 homes, distributed around a local community, further support would also be provided by a multi-disciplinary team.
The home will be able to be replicated easily in suburbs and towns across Australia and will provide a best-practice example of sustainable, innovative design, working together with social programs to address one of the core challenges of contemporary society, the issue of youth homelessness.
Developing concept designs
This key initial step is aimed at catalysing the project by providing a tangible scheme for key decision makers to endorse and enable the construction and delivery of these homes.
Urban Creative are currently seeking funding to help them develop the concept design for these homes.
Those interested in getting behind the project can visit this link to the Homes for Homeless Youth Kickstarter fundraising website:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/435009134/help-us-create-homes-for-homeless-youth
Or by visiting www.urbancreativestudio.com.au
Contact
- Liz Van Dort, Orb Agency
- 0413 993 737 liz@orbagency.com.au
- Andrew Milward-Bason, Urban Creative
- 0458 301 016 andrew@urbancreativestudio.com.au
