General vision of homelessness in Auckland central city. Photo: RNZ / Luke McPake
An Auckland city missioner is meeting with government officials to talk about how to respond to rising homelessness.
Outreach providers in the city say it now has 809 rough sleepers -- 90 percent more than last September.
Helen Robinson said that's a crisis and she met with both the Minister and the Associate Minister for Housing recently.
"The reality that we have, in our census, just under 113,000 people who are homeless is absolutely a crisis," she said.
"This is a moral shame on our country and I know that there are many New Zealanders who long for a reality where everybody has a home and everybody has enough support."
Robinson said in recent weeks, she has had meetings with both the Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Minister of Housing Tama Potaka.
"I requested a meeting to talk about the reality of street homelessness, the growth of that happening here in Auckland, the demand that was placing on services and the mission."
Robinson said she met with Tama Potaka and expressed concern about the "direct relationship between emergency housing policies being tightened in September of last year and then a growth in street homelessness".
She said two weeks ago, Chris Bishop contacted her.
"He simply said to me, please tell me directly Helen, what is the reality that you're seeing in central city Auckland? So I took the opportunity," she said.
"Since then we have had a face to face meeting with them with other a small group of other providers here in Auckland and also we are now working with both MSD [Ministry of Social Development] and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to actually see what is it that we can do in response to two particular areas."
Associate Minister for Housing (Social Housing) Minister Tama Potaka. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
Robinson said today she is meeting with officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to continue those talks.
"I am hopeful and look forward to a reality very soon where we can see a significant change at that emergency housing end of homelessness here in New Zealand."
She is asking for two changes.
"A change to the emergency housing policy so that genuinely the genuine needs of people are met. And secondly, we're asking to contract with organisations like the mission so that we can provide that immediate access to shelter and appropriate support services for everybody that needs it."
On Tuesday, Auckland Council's Community Committee voted to write to the government, asking officials to work with frontline agencies and make sure they are using up-to-date data when dealing with the issue.
Community Committee chairperson, councillor Angela Dalton, told Checkpoint on Tuesday recent government policy changes had "made it harder for people to access emergency housing", as had declining people deemed to have contributed to their own lack of accommodation.
"I think there's some policies that have been changed that show a lack of compassion because they are making assumptions that people are not trying hard enough."
Talking to Morning Report on Wednesday, Associate Minister for Housing Tama Potaka said there were "a lot of contributing factors and causes" behind the rise in homelessness.
"There's a number of things that this government is doing, whether or not it's the build program, making sure we build another 500 social homes in Auckland, Māori housing, Kainga Ora, 1500 new homes with chips, resetting the housing system. You would have heard us talking about granny flats and enabling those… and I look forward to the council actually supporting those actions."
Potaka said he had "directed officials to identify some potential target interventions and understand the utilisation rates across transitional housing first, and other support programmes, to make sure we're getting the right utilisation of programmes".
"We're also liaising with a lot of those providers like Strive, Auckland City Mission…and a whole range of others in Auckland," Potaka said.
"No one I know wants to see Kiwis living without shelter, and we're very concerned with the level of rough sleeping and people in cars, and in tents and other things, including in Auckland."
