Vienna to end funding for youth night-time support teams

Vienna will stop funding night-time support teams for young people from 2027, putting their work in public spaces at risk, ORF reports. The AWA* association helps young people with conflicts, drug problems, violence and assaults.

The teams work where young people gather at night, after the city’s youth centres have closed. Since the coronavirus pandemic, many young people have spent their evenings outdoors, including at Karlsplatz and along the Danube Canal.

AWA* worked from mid-May to mid-September this year, from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. The teams held nearly 17,000 conversations, more than 2,000 above the previous year. Willi Hejda of AWA* said demand was likely to keep rising as people spend longer outdoors and living costs and housing pressures increase.

The city provided the association with about 246,000 euros in grants last year. AWA* says a grant cut of 10 per cent would allow it to continue its work, though not expand it. The association has called for teams to be permanently assigned to Yppenplatz and Reumannplatz as well.

District heads from the SPÖ in Vienna’s 2nd, 4th and 9th districts oppose the funding cut, but their own budgets are under pressure. The office of city councillor Bettina Emmerling of NEOS said youth work in parks and neighbourhoods was a priority, but funding for the teams would not be possible from 2027.

Vienna incorporated awareness work at events into its events law this year. Hejda called it contradictory to require such support at events while ending it in public spaces, where, he said, emergency services and police may otherwise be the only responders. AWA* hopes funding can still be found across city departments.