She never had an inkling during that time of raging arguments with her mum back in Sydney that she’d find joy in the faces of happy kids.

Caring about how others feel or planning her meals for the week wasn’t in her thinking when she ditched home for her boyfriend’s in Newcastle, then her aunt’s at Bathurst.

Looping through the state took her on to a refuge in Orange, and family in Wagga.

She was never settling; a disruptive, aimless existence that failed to change her take on life: that she wasn’t going to amount to anything.

Disruption and not getting along. It was an approach to everything that was getting her nowhere. Except to homelessness.

Katie tries to give that a slant to show how she’s not really homeless. That, she says of her initial beliefs, is when a person “was like, couldn’t afford anything. Living under a bridge with a cardboard box, or on a park bench.”

“But now when I look at it, it’s a lot more than that. People choose to be like that,” she says.

“With me coming to the youth refuge, I’ve noticed it has a lot more to provide. I wouldn’t call it homelessness, I’d call it temporary accommodation.”

But Katie’s case manager points out that anyone staying in the refuge is homeless, “because it’s crisis accommodation, it’s short-term. We work with a lot of young people who are couch surfing”.

She says homelessness is “very much” a community responsibility”.

“Albury-Wodonga has a really high rate of homelessness. It’s just very hidden.”

Those temporary digs, as Katie calls it, is the Broughton House youth refuge in Albury. It’s a place where she has realised she might actually have her own place one day.

That has come with things such as the house-ready skills program – knowing how the fire alarm works, how to find a phone number for the doctor’s surgery, how to do budgeting. Katie hasn’t got to light bulb changing, but is making a major difference to younger teens through the Changemakers program.

It’s aimed at 12- to 18-year-olds and helps them build leadership skills as well as raise their awareness of issues and to drive programs they’ve designed themselves.

The Albury group, of which Katie is the oldest at 17, has pinpointed issues such as social media bullying, violence, alcohol, drugs and boredom. Katie is looked up to by the others, who constantly ask her to share her ideas.

“I can see all the happy faces of the young people coming in,” she says.

“That makes me feel like I’m actually doing something and that I’m bringing a lot of joy and happiness to people.”

Before she came to Broughton House from a refuge in Wagga about two months ago she wasn’t so positive.

While at Wagga she had a go at getting a private rental, hanging onto the hope that it was something that she could not be denied forever. Her experience was like that experienced by homeless kids everywhere, including Albury.

“They asked me where I was staying. I said ‘I’m actually staying at the Wagga refuge’. They said ‘sorry, we can’t take your application’. They literally shoved me out the door”.

It was a massive knock to her confidence and made her question her motives.

“I felt like I actually didn’t belong in that. Before I came to Broughton House I thought I’m not going to get independent living, I’m going to be homeless for the rest of my life.”

She admits she still doesn’t know why she’d argue with her mum, that she “never really got along with my parents” and that it was the same experience with her aunt – “that was a rough ride too”.

But for all its imperfections, she hopes her new confidence for the future – Changemakers has opened her eyes to a possible career as an events manager – will bring a reconciliation.

That will come though at a distance. She still loves her family, but being in Albury, which she likes for the opportunities for her personal development, has been a plus to make that work.

“My main goal with my family is I want to just be able to say ‘they’re my family, I’m going to stick by them no matter what.”

Katie doesn’t shrink from the wrong she’s done in the past. At the Wagga refuge she was kicked out because of bad behaviour, but she then sought help from headspace over her anger management issues.

“I wasn’t the bravest kid when I was around my family,” she says, then shrugs: “But a kid does what a kid does you know.”

The yelling, screaming, “the throwing” that happened between her and her mother – her family later moved to Wagga from Sydney – means she realises getting away was the right course to take.

“When I was in Wagga I was always getting into a lot of trouble with the law because I was around my family,” she says. “My dad is not the type of guy who is a good guy.”

For his faults, Katie has always hung on to one piece of advice from her father, which coupled with her overwhelmingly positive experiences in Albury is central to her positive take on the future.

“My dad always used to say to me ‘if you want something you go for it’,” she says.

“And I’ve got this quote in my brain all the time – if you dream it, you can achieve it’.”

Go inside our homelessness special feature