A collective response group – comprising Gisborne District Council, Gisborne Police, Te Rūnanganui o Ngāti Porou, Te Rūnanga o Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, Manaaki Tairāwhiti and Oasis Community Shelter – has put together an action plan.
Facilitating the plan is Manaaki Tairāwhiti, a Cabinet-endorsed, iwi-led group tat supports community and government organisations to improve regional social wellbeing.
Manaaki Tairāwhiti chairman Ronald Nepe said they wanted to provide rough sleepers “a safe place to be”, including creating more housing solutions for them.
Manaaki Tairāwhiti project manager Leslynne Jackson said there was no no new funding for the response, but they were exploring options.
This included the council investigating what toilet and shower facilities were available for those living on the streets, and providing them with storage options.
“We’ve all seen supermarket trolleys parked up somewhere with a blanket over it that holds all of someone’s worldly possessions ... we’re working on these sorts of actions,” she said. “We’re not going to be able to eliminate homelessness or rough sleeping.”
The response group meets monthly and Manaaki Tairāwhiti has a strategic role, making sure the action plan is evidence-based and engaging with rough sleepers in the first instance.
“This is a whānau-informed action plan,” Jackson said.
The group explored the idea of a wet house, a supported living environment for people with alcohol dependency.
However, when the group went to the rough sleepers, only two of 25 said they would use the service, Jackson said.
Police said there were about 40 rough sleepers, but the number went up and down, she said.
The term “rough sleepers” refers to people living on the streets either by choice or as a last resort.
Jackson said the action plan used the term rough sleepers, as “homeless” meant different things to different government departments.
The challenges in finding them a home
Families with children will always get a higher risk rating than a single person who lives alone, and there are a lot of people on the housing waiting list with high risk ratings.
The Oasis Community Church & Shelter is a men’s shelter that gets funding from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to house up to 10 men. Capacity, however, often goes over that.
“Some of those single men with health issues, [a] traumatic brain injury, mental health challenges etc, they kind of know they are never going to get to the top of that [housing] list,” Jackson said.
“And some of them cannot live in close quarters with others for their wellbeing, so the shelter option does not work for them either ... so the last resort is to be sleeping rough.”
She said Oasis shelter manager Lizz Crawford provided a direct outreach for rough sleepers, helping them connect with medical services.
So what now?
Manaaki Tairāwhiti has channelled $30,000 of funding to support the shelter to create a business case to apply for government funding to extend its footprint and offer new options for those transitioning out of the shelter.
“This won’t produce immediate results but will move us forward towards having more sustainable housing options, particularly for a cohort of people that are not well served by the other housing options,” Jackson said.
Number of people in emergency housing drops
Jackson said the housing register and emergency housing data did not show the full picture of those in need as the application process could be challenging.
“It’s a fairly handy indicator, but it is not the only indicator of need.”
According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, as of January 2025, Gisborne had 493 applications on the housing register.
Ministry of Social Development (MSD) statistics released in December 2024 showed 18 Gisborne families were living in emergency housing. This was a 32% decrease from July 2024.
MSD general manager of housing Karen Hocking said this decrease followed changes in August to strengthen the eligibility settings.
“We introduced a clear, rules-based system for emergency housing assistance to reduce the number of people in emergency housing and support our focus on getting people into sustainable homes.”
She also attributed the decrease to social and community housing providers supplying more houses.
Rough sleepers wrongly blamed for alcohol issues
Tairāwhiti police officer Isaac Ngatai said the region’s drinking problem was often wrongly attributed to rough sleepers.
“People that have got houses, they come and drink with these homeless people and then they take off.”
Ngatai said there used to be a group of around 13 to 14 people who gathered to drink at the Cenotaph and only around three of them were homeless (that number had since dwindled to around three).
“That’s because they are not liquor ban areas and they know they can drink over there. Hence, we are looking at possibly getting an alcohol ban in those particular areas.”
Ngatai said there was “a lot going on in the background” to help the region’s addiction and rough sleepers.
