Homelessness and housing

The people lying in our shop fronts, parks, and public places are indicators of a lack of love and the failure in our economy.

Here’s a poem written by a homeless man in Auckland:

Here I am

Here I am with all I own
2 bags, no teddy
Evicted, trespassed
From my abode
No love, now all alone
Victoria Park has become my new home.
No kitchen, no shower,
No light switch or power
I sleep beneath the big, tall sky tower.
The police took all that I own
My teddy bear, all I hold dear.
Homeless and bare
My heart, my soul
Now in despair.
My life I slowly have to rebuild
And repair
As I lay in Victoria Park
The cold
The dark
Not knowing how, when or where to start
My shattered pain and hurtful past.

Recently on Bernard Hickey’s Thursday night weekly The Hoon (which I recommend) the Auckland City Missioner said she had never met somebody who had volunteered to be homeless. For that and other comments she made I’m told Associate Minister of Housing Potaka is furious with what she said.

The truth hurts, Minister. The community agencies have received a token amount of funding until June next year to clean up the streets. In the government’s mind it’s a case of “get rid of them”. The people who are homeless are complex individuals with common demons of drugs, alcohol, physical and sexual abuse; often in state institutions which were supposed to protect them. Agencies can’t place the homeless easily, if there were even enough homes in which to place them.

The Minister requires the agencies to report daily on progress of clearing up the streets. This is classic out of sight out of mind dumb political thinking. When the Minister of Housing moves money set aside for essential housing to build a bridge in his electorate his lack of ethics is transparent Chris Bishop used Kāinga Ora money to fund a bridge in his electorate | The Post

Image / Chris Slane

Bernard Hickey noted in an article:

….the day after it emerged Housing Minister Chris Bishop had moved funds from Kāinga Ora’s cancelled house-building programme to build a bridge in his Lower Hutt electorate, NZ Herald-$ reported this morning that 402 of the 642 applications for emergency housing in Auckland in August were declined.

Also, since its formation in late November 2023, the Coalition Government has cancelled plans to build another 3,500 Kāinga Ora homes and has removed 2,500 people from emergency housing in motels, some of whom it does not know where they ended up. Charities helping the homeless say many have ended up sleeping in doorways, tents and under motorway bridges, including over 600 in Auckland.
· Many of the rough sleepers have gone to Hospital A&E departments over winter with ailments picked up living in the open, forcing the Government to spend hundreds of millions more on pre-fabricated A&E beds, and some have ended up in prison at a cost of almost $500 per night.

In this article Waikato mayor hits back at Wayne Brown over comments to send homeless there | Stuff it was reported when the Mayor of Auckland talked about the homeless making the central city untidy the Mayor of Central Waikato responded ….. the true measure of a town isn’t how tall its buildings are, it’s how it treats those at ground level. To this comment I say “amen”

As a society we must rethink how we approach finding housing solutions. This is an opportunity for Labour, the Greens, and their potential coalition partners, to promote a national discussion on the sorts of policies which will address the inequalities in housing between generations.

The parties must then promote bold policies which will address this vexed challenge for us all. The answer that the market will solve it is fundamentally flawed. That’s only part of the solution. We must yearn for decent housing for all. Labour’s done it before. It can do it again with the Greens. It just requires different economic thinking. Bring in death duties and assign this revenue to address housing for all.