In this episode, we meet Brook Turner, Director of Partnerships at Visionwest in West Auckland.

Brook didn't come to homelessness through a housing career. He came through youth development — and through the ten young people his team found living under the Henderson Bridge in the first week of opening a creative youth centre in West Auckland. All Māori. All recently discharged from the justice system into nothing. That moment set the course for everything that followed.

In this episode, Brook makes the case for early intervention as the most powerful lever against adult homelessness, and for going unconditional — on housing, on people, on the commitment to solve this. He talks about what it actually takes to sustain a tenancy long term, why Housing First is a philosophy not just a programme, and why the system keeps building stopgaps when what's needed is a fundamentally different decision.

We'd like to thank Brook for taking the time to speak with us for this episode.

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