Speaker 1: Hilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Homelessness
Speaker 1: is one of the most visible signs of poverty in
Speaker 1: this country. Walk through the CBD of any of our
Speaker 1: major cities and you're likely to come across someone living rough.
Speaker 1: But often what we may see on our streets is
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg for a much larger issue.
Speaker 1: This week, Home Ground in Auckland, one of the initiatives
Speaker 1: trying to tackle this crisis, turns three years old. But
Speaker 1: that's just one location in one city trying to get
Speaker 1: on top of a national problem. Later we'll speak to
Speaker 1: ends at Herald senior writer Simon Wilson about Home Ground
Speaker 1: and how it's working. But first on the Front Page,
Speaker 1: we'll talk with University of Otago research professor and co
Speaker 1: leader of hey Kyanga Uranga Housing and Health Research Program,
Speaker 1: Nevill Pious, about how we could solve this crisis. First off, Neville,
Speaker 1: how bad is the homelessness issue in New Zealand. It's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to kind of get concrete numbers, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I did agree. I'd say we pretty clearly have a
Speaker 2: homelessness crisis. Chelsea, New Zealand has about forty eight thousand
Speaker 2: people on the night of our last census who were
Speaker 2: homeless on that particular night, and another seventy thousand who
Speaker 2: are living in inhabitable housing. We already know that New
Speaker 2: Zealand is one of the very few countries that has
Speaker 2: equality of homelessness in terms of we have as many
Speaker 2: females as we have males. We have more children homeless
Speaker 2: than most other comparable countries, and we have a hugely
Speaker 2: disproportionate number of Maori homeless. We have homelessness up and
Speaker 2: down the country, but it's particularly acute in our main
Speaker 2: metro areas, so I'd describe it as it's not unknown,
Speaker 2: it's a crisis. I can see people, unfortunately on my
Speaker 2: way to work, living on the street, and there are
Speaker 2: lots of people in emergency housing, lots of people who
Speaker 2: need to be in emergency housing, but all of those
Speaker 2: people need to be in permanent shelter. So we have
Speaker 2: a homelessness crisis in your deal.
Speaker 1: So how does it all work? Because there are different
Speaker 1: categories of help. I suppose if you find yourself without
Speaker 1: a roof over your head, isn't there.
Speaker 2: We try to put people in lots of boxes, but
Speaker 2: I think we need to take a step back here
Speaker 2: and kind of say hey, and internationally, the best practice
Speaker 2: is with people if you're homeless, and you can be
Speaker 2: homeless by sleeping rough on the street, by being living
Speaker 2: in a car, by being in unstable accommodation, which is
Speaker 2: kind of that cout surfing in a friend's house, in
Speaker 2: the shelters, what would be internationally the shelter system, our
Speaker 2: emergency housing system, our transitional housing system, all of those.
Speaker 2: You have no control over where you're going to be
Speaker 2: living long term. You have no ability to kind of
Speaker 2: set down permanent routes. In academia, we call it a
Speaker 2: sense of onological security, but it's that sense of this
Speaker 2: my home, this is where I am. If you don't
Speaker 2: have that, you're homeless, and unfortunately far too many people
Speaker 2: have that in New Zealand. The answer to homelessness, I suggest,
Speaker 2: is housing people and giving them that sense of security.
Speaker 2: So having some ability to have some choice in where
Speaker 2: you stay and what your home is, so as you
Speaker 2: can put down routes there, you feel stable there and
Speaker 2: you can go on with building the other things in
Speaker 2: your life that you need to build on. If you're
Speaker 2: worried about the roof over your head and where you're
Speaker 2: going to be tonight, next week, or in a few
Speaker 2: weeks time, or even a few months time, then if
Speaker 2: that's the major stressor, then you're homeless. That's the New
Speaker 2: Zealand definition of homelessness. It's a pretty internationally accepted definition
Speaker 2: of homelessness. I think we know how many people are
Speaker 2: homeless then, so we break it down. Our responses are
Speaker 2: broken down into categories, and that's how the categories come about.
Speaker 2: In New Zealand, we have a scheme for emergency housing,
Speaker 2: which is where we put people up for a few weeks.
Speaker 2: In some places we still have night shelters where we
Speaker 2: put people up for a night. We have transitional housing,
Speaker 2: which is really just housing people for a few months,
Speaker 2: and then we have permanent social housing, which is mostly
Speaker 2: Kayango Aura but also with a community housing provider system.
Speaker 2: We have the Accommodation Supplement, which subsidizes people's rental housing
Speaker 2: and tries to make people afford the rental. Unfortunately, a
Speaker 2: lot of those don't work. The system doesn't work in
Speaker 2: the system has quite a few gaps in it, but
Speaker 2: we do know that the answer, and a lot of
Speaker 2: my research has focused on, Hey, when we move people
Speaker 2: into the permanent end of that. Where we move people
Speaker 2: so is that they're permanently housed in either Kyang or
Speaker 2: Aura with community housing providers or in the private rental sector,
Speaker 2: then you start to start to see dramatic improvements. So
Speaker 2: from people who've been sleeping rough with mental health and
Speaker 2: other problems. You see that you see over twelve months.
Speaker 2: If you can get people well housed, permanently housed and supported,
Speaker 2: you start to see this dramatic improvement in mental health,
Speaker 2: with their need for mental health services going down about
Speaker 2: sixty to eighty percent. You start to see how people
Speaker 2: improve in their lives. Their income starts to go up. Firstly,
Speaker 2: we get them on the right benefit and they're getting
Speaker 2: all the benefits they're entitled to, so their income goes up.
Speaker 2: Then their interactions with their police offending goes down, their
Speaker 2: interactions with the criminal system goes down, and finally, after
Speaker 2: five years later, we start to see dramatic improvements in
Speaker 2: health as they are stably housed and get to deal
Speaker 2: with all their issues. But it is that the answer
Speaker 2: to everybody is long term sustainable housing. Unfortunately, many of
Speaker 2: the categories we try to put people in are coming
Speaker 2: from our responses that are for short term, limited stays
Speaker 2: that don't really solve the problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a simple answers that housing people will
Speaker 1: end homelessness.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is the answer.
Speaker 1: It's an easy answer, but is it an easy road
Speaker 1: to get there.
Speaker 2: So it's a difficult road to get enough houses. So
Speaker 2: Finland has done it. Finland has decided that they will
Speaker 2: have no more pins who are homeless. So they have
Speaker 2: built up their social housing sector and housing support. And
Speaker 2: if you are in housing crisis in Finland, there's one
Speaker 2: number you call. Somebody will come to wherever you are
Speaker 2: and give you an assessment and try to work out
Speaker 2: what the housing need is. And if that need is
Speaker 2: permanent housing, that's there. If that need is to sustain
Speaker 2: your tendency so as it doesn't break, then they'll solve that.
Speaker 2: If the need is the underlying need is a mental
Speaker 2: health crisis, they'll put you in touch with mental health
Speaker 2: and get that. But we do have we have a
Speaker 2: very broken housing market and we have a support system
Speaker 2: with a lot of gaps in it and a lot
Speaker 2: of holes. We're not so in Finland they've gotten up
Speaker 2: to twenty five percent social housing in New Zealand where
Speaker 2: sing along at four point two percent social housing. So
Speaker 2: we just we we're not building enough social houses. We've
Speaker 2: gone from playing or recently under the previous government was
Speaker 2: building about fifteen hundred a year, which probably wasn't enough,
Speaker 2: and now they're talking about getting it down to zero
Speaker 2: as a total. So we need to We do need
Speaker 2: to build more houses. We need to think long term
Speaker 2: about it. But we also need a system that works,
Speaker 2: and we need to make sure that when people go
Speaker 2: to support for MSD that that support is it is
Speaker 2: appropriate for what their need is, and that they're treated.
Speaker 2: They're treated for what the people they are. Everybody's a person,
Speaker 2: they need to be treated as such and that they're
Speaker 2: given good advice.
Speaker 3: What worries me is it before so hard to get
Speaker 3: stite has as back in the region. Now that's stopped,
Speaker 3: the demand is growing where they going to guy, we're
Speaker 3: just going to have to keep building some night shelters
Speaker 3: if we can't home these people. The fact is they
Speaker 3: have made the criteria to inter emergency housing more difficult.
Speaker 3: As a result, fewer people are going into emergency housing
Speaker 3: and here and what it up. Are they they're going
Speaker 3: to end up at that night shelter or are they
Speaker 3: going to be on the streets.
Speaker 1: According to the Salvation Armies State of the Nation twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five report, emergency housing numbers have plummeted from four
Speaker 1: thousand in September twenty twenty three, down to fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: in September twenty twenty four and below five hundred in
Speaker 1: December twenty twenty four. The agency site's reduction targets set
Speaker 1: by the government for the number of people in emergency housing,
Speaker 1: and they've tightened criteria for access to this kind of
Speaker 1: housing support. Now, is there a misconception that, Okay, yay,
Speaker 1: it's gone from four thousand to five hundred, But where
Speaker 1: of those yeah, where have those three thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: people gone?
Speaker 2: So those three five hundred people have gone on to
Speaker 2: other forms of prices. We've shifted it around, so a
Speaker 2: lot of there are a lot of NGOs, including the
Speaker 2: Salvation Army, who are seeing a lot more people coming
Speaker 2: to them there. So a large number and we've had
Speaker 2: a visible increase in the numbers sleeping in the streets
Speaker 2: in most of our metro centers. So a large number
Speaker 2: of sleeping in the streets or in cars are hidden
Speaker 2: and large and even larger number or sleeping a coutsurfing
Speaker 2: with friends or family. So I need has been so
Speaker 2: the emergency housing was is a temporary trying to have
Speaker 2: a solution. But rather than reducing the wait list by
Speaker 2: reducing the amount of people in emergency housing by getting
Speaker 2: people into permanent housing, we've just said we've just made
Speaker 2: it much harder to get the emergency housing benefit. There
Speaker 2: are much newer emergency housing beds available and ms D
Speaker 2: is treating people much worse as they come into MSD.
Speaker 2: It is much harder to get through the MSD system
Speaker 2: to get an emergency housing benefit than it was. And
Speaker 2: those are the policy choices that have been enacted by
Speaker 2: the government, and they're very clear about it. It's a
Speaker 2: policy choice to reduce the emergency housing and to make
Speaker 2: it much harder to get.
Speaker 1: There were twenty three hundred and one applicants on the
Speaker 1: housing register as at thirty first of December twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: a decrease apparently of twenty percent from the same time
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. How do you view those numbers?
Speaker 2: Yes, Likewise, if you make if you make the process
Speaker 2: of it, and if you've tried your one of the
Speaker 2: interesting things to do is to try to try to
Speaker 2: fill out the online forms to do an assessment for
Speaker 2: either MSD controlled both the emergency housing assistance and the
Speaker 2: wait list for paying or that you're talking about, and
Speaker 2: for to do either of those to fill it out.
Speaker 2: Like I'm pretty well educated and I have a PhD.
Speaker 2: And I do housing of the whole time, And to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, I struggle to fill out the
Speaker 2: forms when I'm trying to help people. It's really tricky,
Speaker 2: and there the help that's available to do this and
Speaker 2: to get the information right and to assess people's need
Speaker 2: isn't there. The emergency housing wait list is separated into categories.
Speaker 2: It's ABCD are the top level categories, and those are
Speaker 2: what we try howse so are what theoretically we could house.
Speaker 2: And then within that you're given a grade, so from
Speaker 2: a twenty one all the way down to a one.
Speaker 2: So a twenty one is the very highest need with
Speaker 2: no income, sleeping on the streets for a long time,
Speaker 2: or very high history of mental health needs, several children,
Speaker 2: dependence in utter prices of life and debt, and so
Speaker 2: we've gone from housing from a we used house pretty
Speaker 2: consistently A twenty one to about a thirteen, and now
Speaker 2: we're only housing A twenty one through a seventeen. So
Speaker 2: we're of those people that are that we'd like to
Speaker 2: be supporting on the wait list all the way from
Speaker 2: A twenty one down to D one. We're only housing
Speaker 2: that really tiny fraction in that real crisis. And that's
Speaker 2: the only way you get on the weight lift. That
Speaker 2: they've restricted access to getting on the weight list because
Speaker 2: there isn't enough housing, but also by making it trickier
Speaker 2: to get people on and to get your assessment needs
Speaker 2: so high that you're clearly an utter crisis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems quite difficult to do so as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so to be eligible to really get housed,
Speaker 2: you need to be an utter crisis. To fill out
Speaker 2: the forms, you need to be really well educated, really sharp,
Speaker 2: I have well able to express yourself and your needs
Speaker 2: and a lot of evidence to back it up. And
Speaker 2: quite often that people who are in the most crisis
Speaker 2: with the most mental health needs. This is quite a
Speaker 2: difficult aspal.
Speaker 1: Is there a misconception here about homeless people thinking of
Speaker 1: like the old adages of people saying, well, why don't
Speaker 1: they get a job, or don't give them cash on
Speaker 1: the street, they'll use it on drugs. I mean that
Speaker 1: must just get your guard.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the answer is when we house people, they
Speaker 2: do less drugs, they spend less time in the street,
Speaker 2: they get jobs. We've got to say that five years later,
Speaker 2: their income from employment is up one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: eight percent. When we looked at a cohort of people
Speaker 2: who were sleeping rough on the street and were housed
Speaker 2: by the People's Project, most of those had been paying
Speaker 2: taxes in the years before they were homeless, and after
Speaker 2: they were housed, about five years later, they were paying
Speaker 2: substantially more tax To be honest with you, I kind
Speaker 2: of go we're always all of us are only one
Speaker 2: big mental health crisis away from being homeless. Whether that's
Speaker 2: a trauma where you get hit in the back of
Speaker 2: the heads, something falls out of the sky and hits
Speaker 2: you in the back of the head, it can be
Speaker 2: enough to throw your life out and if you were
Speaker 2: we have a related mental health a shortage of mental
Speaker 2: health services. If you I think life is tricky enough
Speaker 2: and most people are tight enough that if things fall
Speaker 2: over you will wind up homeless in New Zealand and
Speaker 2: it is a really we make the system really hard
Speaker 2: to navigate. So yeah, I feel it's unfair to those
Speaker 2: people and those individuals who are homeless to blame them
Speaker 2: when the system is so badly set up and it
Speaker 2: doesn't do what it should what it should be trying
Speaker 2: to do. It's not achieving what it's what we should
Speaker 2: be achieving.
Speaker 4: No, No, I don't think it is the sole measure
Speaker 4: of success. You know, you can have people into permanent housing,
Speaker 4: but their well being and lifting the well being is
Speaker 4: also a secondary signal of success. Whether or not this
Speaker 4: is working, and certainly our concern, one of our concerns
Speaker 4: continues to be the potential for people to drift back
Speaker 4: into emergency or to tune back into emergency. That's quite
Speaker 4: a concern that we've had for the last twelve months.
Speaker 4: If we are able to help people ensure people aren't
Speaker 4: living in an emergency, that they don't trans and beck
Speaker 4: into emergency house in which, as you know, in my view,
Speaker 4: very catastrophic for they are in health or being, but
Speaker 4: it's also quite costly.
Speaker 1: Right and finally, never this might be a silly question,
Speaker 1: but Is the government doing enough to end homelessness?
Speaker 2: No, they're not. We have lots of bits of the
Speaker 2: system that aren't working, so we have an overall we're
Speaker 2: not building enough homes to meet the current backlog of need,
Speaker 2: let alone the future needs. We've made the first point
Speaker 2: of entry for those who are in most crises, and
Speaker 2: that emergency housing much harder to get through for people
Speaker 2: who are very vulnerable and struggle really to get help.
Speaker 2: We're relying on the Salvation Army and other NGOs to
Speaker 2: pick up a lot of slack that's made by a
Speaker 2: decision to reduce emergency housing in MSD and to make
Speaker 2: that git harder to get through. We have a very
Speaker 2: hard gate to get through for that permanent housing that
Speaker 2: we know really really works and really impost people lives
Speaker 2: and is most cost effective on that weight list. And
Speaker 2: of course getting on the weight list isn't the answer.
Speaker 2: You need to get off the weight list and be
Speaker 2: permanently housed. We are investing more money in transitional housing,
Speaker 2: but transitional housing to where our private rental market is
Speaker 2: broken to make up the gap. The accommodation supplement is
Speaker 2: woefully inefficient and the ineffective at making up that gap
Speaker 2: for those who could be in the private rental sector
Speaker 2: but aren't. So the government isn't doing enough. They don't
Speaker 2: have their systems talking to each other, and particularly around MSD,
Speaker 2: who controls a lot of this system, and they don't
Speaker 2: really they don't have a plan that they're trying to implement.
Speaker 2: We have what we still haven't right now, but the
Speaker 2: government isn't listening to the previous Homelessness Action Plan, which
Speaker 2: is all about getting people into permanent stable housing. So
Speaker 2: we know what the answer is. We're just don't seem
Speaker 2: to be working at it, and we're making it harder
Speaker 2: for people to get in the gate. That's why some
Speaker 2: of those lists are going down. It's not because we're
Speaker 2: seeing less people homeless or that the NGOs have to
Speaker 2: help less people. It's because we've made the system harder
Speaker 2: to approach. We've made a system more complicated.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Neville cheers. Jersey Ansied Herald's senior
Speaker 1: writer Simon Wilson has spoken with some of the residents
Speaker 1: at the Auckland City Missions Home Ground, which provides housing
Speaker 1: to those most in need. We have a chat with
Speaker 1: him about who these people really are.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Simon can you explain to me what home Ground is.
Speaker 1: For those who don't know, Homeground.
Speaker 5: Is the mothership of the Auckland City Mission building that
Speaker 5: was open three years ago. Homeground offers a principle in
Speaker 5: dealing with the homeless called housing first. And if you
Speaker 5: think about the standard way in which things used to
Speaker 5: be done. You have someone who's got a problem with
Speaker 5: substance its abuse, it's homeless living in a park or whatever.
Speaker 5: What used to happen is that social services would say
Speaker 5: to them, if you stop drinking or if you stop
Speaker 5: doing the drugs, we will find somewhere for you to
Speaker 5: live now, but you've got to be clean and you've
Speaker 5: got to look after yourself, and on it goest it
Speaker 5: didn't work because these are very traumatized people and very
Speaker 5: often their substance abuse or their mental health issues are
Speaker 5: a product of the trauma, and they're the hardest thing
Speaker 5: for them to deal with. So housing first says, but
Speaker 5: if we give people something somewhere that is safe to live,
Speaker 5: it's warm and dry, then with that housing need taken
Speaker 5: care of first, we can then wrap the services they
Speaker 5: need around them in order to rebuild their lives. So
Speaker 5: we can provide medical help psychological help. We can feed them,
Speaker 5: we can do we can give them vocational training, we
Speaker 5: can do outreach program so we can do all sorts
Speaker 5: of things.
Speaker 6: Well, I was living with Tosh, we mate and hedeed
Speaker 6: and passed away. You know, if your pre traumatic time
Speaker 6: having to be made in front of you. And but
Speaker 6: the mission, I mean they came to the party and
Speaker 6: they having this place is great. You know these days
Speaker 6: when I wake up from them like, oh God, I'm
Speaker 6: not being arrested lot. Life on the eas isn't life
Speaker 6: on the eas as I used to know it, because
Speaker 6: I've never been like this had my life sim to
Speaker 6: yell it.
Speaker 7: So it's I'm in terms of those who you've met,
Speaker 7: I mean, they seem like just really good people who
Speaker 7: just need a leg up.
Speaker 1: Basically, the tenants.
Speaker 5: That I've met there have quite remarkable stories. There will
Speaker 5: be severe trauma in their background, particularly if they're women.
Speaker 5: They will have almost certainly been abused, perhaps over decades.
Speaker 5: There'll be that trauma. There'll be mental health issues or
Speaker 5: be substance abuse issues. But at the same time, they
Speaker 5: are people who are not in an awful lot of cases,
Speaker 5: are not unlike what you might think of as you
Speaker 5: and me ordinary people. So I interviewed three of them
Speaker 5: for a story I've got coming out in the Herald,
Speaker 5: and the three I interviewed one of them as a PhD.
Speaker 5: Very bright guy. Obviously, he's contributed to social research in
Speaker 5: New Zealand. He is now at homegun. He's eighty two
Speaker 5: years old now. Lovely, lovely man, very smart, very dry wit.
Speaker 5: When you're talking to him, he throws jokes at you
Speaker 5: to see if you get them. That kind of thing.
Speaker 5: It's fantastic. So that was terrific to meet him. I
Speaker 5: met a couple of women who were very close friends
Speaker 5: and had known each other for thirty years. But apart
Speaker 5: from that relationship, they neither of them had women friends.
Speaker 5: They just weren't interested in having women friends. Didn't trust them,
Speaker 5: and they were both had a history of being abused
Speaker 5: physically abused by their partners, and also a history of drugs.
Speaker 5: They both left home when they were teenagers and got
Speaker 5: seriah actually into a drug culture and didn't quite manage
Speaker 5: to get themselves out until much much later, decades later.
Speaker 5: I had somewhere. They said, look, I'd be dead, I'd
Speaker 5: be dead if it wasn't for this place. And you
Speaker 5: kind of believe them. It offered them a way to
Speaker 5: sort themselves out, as they say, and that was working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was going to be my next question. Actually,
Speaker 1: where would these people go if it wasn't the home ground.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it's an easy process to find somewhere
Speaker 1: to live when you're you.
Speaker 5: Know, there's twenty thousand people waiting for social housing in
Speaker 5: New Zealand and there's an awful lot of homeless people,
Speaker 5: and eighty eighty apartments isn't very much at all. There
Speaker 5: are many other homes around Auckland run by agencies, not
Speaker 5: just the City Mission but Vision West and other agencies,
Speaker 5: and some of those use the home ground services now,
Speaker 5: so homegrounds if you like the kind of Pinnacle one,
Speaker 5: it's the best because it was purpose built for it.
Speaker 5: But there are others, so a lot of those people
Speaker 5: will be and might find a common in those other
Speaker 5: places boarding houses or whatever, or they are sleeping rough.
Speaker 5: City Mission runs a facility that's only for women, so
Speaker 5: for women who basically just are traumatized by the presence
Speaker 5: of men. Now it's been so bad for them, so
Speaker 5: they secure there and gradually they'll kind of move into
Speaker 5: a more mixed society if you like they as they
Speaker 5: heal themselves. Homelessness comes and goes with the economic times.
Speaker 5: One of the ironies for Auckland, as for cities all
Speaker 5: over the world where there are facilities, is that homeless
Speaker 5: people will migrate to that city. If you're homeless in
Speaker 5: fung Erra, it's harder than if you're homeless in Auckland,
Speaker 5: because there are social services to help you that are
Speaker 5: better developed here than they're just not say they're not
Speaker 5: developed there. So that's an issue. I would say that
Speaker 5: the days of walking down Queen Street and feeling that, gosh,
Speaker 5: is this safe places? Is the clean place? Is this
Speaker 5: okay for all of us, I'd say that that's much
Speaker 5: less issue now than it used to be. That's my
Speaker 5: perception of it. I don't have any statistical evidence for it,
Speaker 5: but I go there a lot, and I go there
Speaker 5: in the evenings and an item as well as the day,
Speaker 5: and it does seem to me that it's a it's
Speaker 5: a better place all round now because there are more
Speaker 5: people doing all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Oh and there are places like Homeground.
Speaker 5: Now, there are places like home Ground. That's right.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Simon.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 1: produced by Ethan Sells and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 1: a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 1: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.