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9:39 am, August 21st, 2026 - 16 comments
Categories: housing, national, poverty, same old national -
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Very sad recent news from yesterday. Three homeless people in Aotearoa, the land of plenty, have recently frozen to death.
Homelessness has attracted the attention of the Prime Minister who said this:
I’ve always thought you can tell something about a country by what it learns to walk past. And, somewhere along the way, we’ve got used to seeing people sleeping rough on our streets.
We see people bedded down in doorways and sat outside stations, carrying their lives in rucksacks and with sleeping bags on their backs. And I think most people have the same reaction: this isn’t right; it shouldn’t be happening here. But we’ve lived with it for so long that something that used to shock us now feels like part of the scenery.
That’s not on the public. It’s on us as politicians.
Unfortunately it was not our Prime Minister who said this. It was UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Our Prime Minister thinks that the homelessness crisis has been solved. Ministry of Social Development managers have been instructed they could face performance management if their staff approve too many emergency housing requests. And he is busy sheparding through a law that will allow police to issue move on orders to homeless people, punishable by fine if they breach. This is not a Monty Python script.
Yesterday morning Radio New Zealand did its best to highlight the repercussions of homelessness.
It mentioned that Rotary has been handing out Shelter Bags to the homeless. It helps them stay warm while they wait for homes. Hopefully fewer homeless citizens will freeze to death.
The standout piece of radio however was this interview with Nurse Practitioner Serena Moran who works with people experiencing homelessness in Wellington. She spoke passionately about how she is seeing the consequences of people being discharged from prison and hospital without adequate plans for housing or on going care.
As I listened to her I was convinced that she is an incredible human being.
She spoke about the cause of homelessness.
When our outreach teams are out there on the streets in towns and cities across the country, we are asking people, “Where did you come from? … How has it come to this that you are sleeping rough?” And so the answers are many and varied, but to a large degree still to this very day, the state is one of the largest causes of homelessness. And what I mean by that is people are being released from prison with nowhere to go, no housing plan. People are being discharged from hospitals, deeply unwell, physically sick people discharged from hospitals with nowhere to go.
She then said something that should have current Ministers involved in Justice reflect on their approach to Justice. She said:
It’s not unusual for us to see people released from prison who have been under the forensic mental health team while they’re incarcerated, and are discharged to the streets with no treatment plans in place. It’s not unusual. … And it’s not until they come to our drop-in service, our outreach clinic in the community, and we piece the puzzle together and we start to try and get some information about them from the prison, from forensic services, which all takes time, of course. In the meantime, they’re left untreated, and we have to then put in place a treatment plan, get them enrolled in our service, and start to recommend to their treatment. That’s not unusual. We do it quite often.
And when they are released do they have somewhere to go?
No. No. They go to the street. They’re homeless. And they’re found often by an outreach team, or they’ll find the community drop-in service, and they’ll come to it. And we run clinics there 4 mornings a week, and we will pick them up and we will start to work with them, start to put a plan in place. And often these people will continue to be just under our service because they often won’t be accepted by a community mental health team, even though in our opinion they should sit under a community mental health team. And that’s not because of the community mental health team not wanting people or being not good at their job. It’s because they’re overwhelmed. They don’t have the capacity to pick people up in a timely way, and so we try to manage them. And of course that pushes our capacity because we’re a general practice. We specialize in homelessness, mental health, and addictions. But that takes our resources as well. We have to put in place plans, see people very regularly. And while we love our patients and we want to do the best for them, it puts us under immense pressure as well.
And when asked if we are seeing more rough sleepers she replied:
Yes, definitely. We’re seeing more rough sleepers. Our enrollment has gone up 50% on what it was last year. So we are seeing more people enrolling with us. Most people who enroll with us will be homeless. We’re in very precarious housing situations. We’ve definitely seen an increase. Not only that, I’ll see people in my clinic who are in pain. They don’t meet the threshold to be admitted into hospital. They may have been assaulted. I can treat them in the community, but I have nowhere to send them. I send them back to the streets. I sit in my clinic room as a nurse practitioner. I treat their patients, and I basically have to say to them, “I’m sorry, I can’t find you anywhere to stay tonight. You’ll need to go back to the streets. I’ll give you pain relief. I’ll try and make you feel as comfortable as I can.” But actually, that’s the reality. That’s our reality most days.
She then mentioned that many homeless are on antipsychotic medication and injectable antipsychotics. They are released without follow up. This will mean that they become unwell “and they’re probably going to do something else that’s going to end them back in prison”.
A more cogent description about how the adverse cumulative effect of a number of this Government’s policies I have not heard.
This morning Minister Tama Potaka was interviewed. His response was carefully choerographed and deceptive in the extreme. He was asked by John Campbell repeatedly if Government tightening of the criteria for receiving urgent assistance had contributed to more people sleeping rough. He responded repeately by interpreting “contributed” as being “the sole cause of”. He then kept saying the issue was complex and there were a number of causes. The word “contributed” was put to him repeatedly. He kept deliberately answering a different question.
Then weridly RNZ reported his comments without context.
Potaka performs an important role. He gives the Government a more human face and hides the cruelty behind its policies.
But we are now in a full blown crisis. Homelessness is a blight on our country. Our citizens who need active medical assistance are not receiving it. And people are dying on the streets.
It boggles my mind that a country as wealthy and affluent as ours still tolerates homelessness.
Sure, inequality exists. Under capitalism, it probably always will. But there is an enormous distance between accepting that people will have unequal incomes and wealth, and accepting that some people will have nowhere safe and warm to sleep.
Quite apart from the human misery involved, homelessness is toxic for society as a whole. It makes physical and mental illness harder to treat, addiction harder to manage, employment harder to obtain, and offending and victimisation more likely. Then we spend enormous amounts through hospitals, police, courts and prisons dealing with the consequences.
And even if we accept that homelessness is a moral failing, it isn't a failing on the part of the poor. It's ours.
Because homelessness is a choice. Not for them, but for us.
We let this happen. And the longer we do, the less right we have to invoke personal responsibility, deservingness or economic necessity as some moral justification for allowing it to continue.
If there is a moral failure here, it belongs to a wealthy society that could prevent this and chooses not to.
Tama Potaka – deceptiveness personified – therefore a future leader of the Natz party!
Is this how National plan to lower homelessness numbers?
Agree with what is written.
Reflecting on times gone by when budgets were directed by need then funded appropriately. Taxes were set according that.
Now in these neo liberal times, it would seem that tax is a dirty word.
Give those that already have a surplus, landlords, a tax cut and an ability to offset their tax due. The biggest opposition party is afraid of taxes, wanting to distance themselves from them while the government is telling stories about the tax monster.
It can be argued that neo liberalism, the consumerising of dwellings all increase homelessness.
Shelter bags-FFS is that Rotary's solution. That simply perpetuates the problem.
Maybe the 3,500 state houses cancelled by this government has something to do with the increased level of homelessness…..
Would those three have been in a motel if labour was around,,if so then they then this government is guilty of manslaughter.
This is grueling stuff to read. I agree with res Publica that this situation is toxic for society, and that we all need to try to do something to turn things around – to demand better policies from our government to start with, and a necessary vote for a change of govt.
Following Micky's link from Bernard Hickey to the Stuff article following the young women volunteers trying to make a difference on the streets of Auckland, the stories are tough to read.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361020126/death-despair-and-deportees-young-women-confronting-homelessness-dawn
The 3 people wo died:
The article gives some of the factors that contribute to rough sleeping and homelessness generally: 501s, people released from prison, those who were doing fine until they lost a job or relationship, or became mentally ill.
These are all things could be fixed with better public services, instead of the austerity we are currently being subjected to.
Did these 3 people approach winz for housing assistance and get sent away, if they did it is manslaughter.
I'd be more likely to believe this if there were any actual numbers in this post. Besides 50% more enrollment in the nurse's organisation, which says nothing about the actual numbers of homeless people.
I doubt that, but in any case, just for you:
https://www.hud.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Documents/Homelessness/Homelessness-insights-report-to-end-March-2026.pdf?m=572f7739f02450ea54793fedd7ec85b57727299e [pg. 16]
Feel free to cherry-pick your way through that report, there are other sources too if you genuinely wish to inform yourself, and maintain your dismissive stance (aka nothing to see here, move & carry on as usual).
Ok, we both agree that the relevant period to look at is March 2025 to March 2026. Now, in that period, has the total number of homeless people increased, decreased, or stayed the same?
The problem with people who have strong biases is that they’re quick to make assumptions (unchecked) and jump to conclusions (unverified).
The other problem with such people is that they refuse to look for information that could challenge their pre-set ideas.
Another problem with such people when faced with information that doesn’t fit into their idea world is that they exhibit Olympics-level mental gymnastics to somersault away and/or out of the situation.
As I said before, I doubt you’ll be swayed by numbers, any numbers, so you could look at what Government has been doing recently to give you a hint of the current situation:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/additional-145-million-support-rough-sleepers
Coincidentally, there also is a link to same report (Latest Homelessness Insights Report) that I linked to before, which you obviously haven’t at all looked at.
At least you made it to pg. 3 of the report. So far, you’ve ticked all the boxes, i.e., despite the report, the sudden additional Government funding (NB getting any funding from this Government is like squeezing blood from a stone unless it’s RoNS), and the experience on the ground (as per OP):
QFT
Have a nice day and don’t trip over an invisible homeless person when you venture out into the real world.
What a sad response Gareth. It isn't real because you personally did not see actual stats, (which would vary from town to town, and area to area.) Really?
A tide of misery, sometimes getting a place to stay,
I suggest you go and talk to the Salvation Army.
With a 'worst influenza for ten years, plus other chest infections causing hospitals to be over run' I guess more nurses are needed.
How many people have to die to convince you it is bad?
If someone deliberately drives their car into a group of pedestrians killing one of them, the law around murder does not distinguish between whether the driver intended to kill or was reckless as to whether death would result – either way, it is murder.
Homeless people froze to death in New Zealand, in part as a result of policy choices by the government, and despite the government knowing that policy choices were available to avoid that happening. As with the laws around murder, I do not distinguish between whether the government intended that homeless people freeze to death, or were simply reckless as to that outcome. Either way, lives were needlessly lost, and the government should be accountable for that (and likewise future governments if they continue to be indifferent/reckless to similar outcomes).