Homelessness on the rise in Northland

Resourceful Whangārei pensioner Martin Colcord, who has been waiting for social housing, has been happy enough living out of his car over the past six years. However, he's now facing aggressive surgery for skin cancer and will need a proper home to recuperate afterward. Photo / Michael Cunningham

“Keep your chin up and your phone handy.”

That’s what homeless Whangārei pensioner Martin Colcord was told when he last checked on his place in the queue for social housing.

Colcord, 65, has been living in his car off and on for the past six years. The rough lifestyle, in which he parks up for the night at various spots around the city’s coastline, hasn’t been too much of an issue for him. In fact, he says it’s been good.

He doesn’t have to pay rent and the view is always one he likes.

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A resourceful man, Colcord is skilled in many trades from which he’s earned enough over the years to sustain himself, six successive partners, and seven children, albeit not enough to accrue any savings.

He’s still physically strong and determined enough to wrestle a dinghy on and off his car roof, using it to fish and dive for most of his meals.

Colcord doesn’t fear for his safety and has a resilient personality. He appreciates the simple things in life such as just being able to fit everything he needs for his day-to-day living in his trusty Toyota station wagon and having enough room left over to lie down flat at night.

While he’s proud of his roadworthiness, he also knows it probably works against him in the ongoing struggle among an ever-increasing throng of low to moderate income earners trying to secure low-cost public rental housing.

“‘He’ll get by, he’ll get another boat or something’, I think that’s pretty much how they look at it,” Colcord said.

However, now also waiting on aggressive surgery for skin cancer, he believed he should be a higher priority case. Social services had told him his chances of getting public housing might be better if he could get a letter from his doctor explaining he needed somewhere suitable to recuperate after the operation - that his car wouldn’t be a suitable place.

Even so, his wait might still be a long one.

Latest Ministry of Social Development (MSD) social housing data showed the queue for Northland had stretched in the last quarter to 1248. Of those, 642 people were in Whangārei.

In 2019 there were only 408 Northlanders on the list. With the exception of 2022, that number has continued to rise markedly every year since.

At 65 and in need of somewhere to recuperate after upcoming surgery for skin cancer, pensioner and longstanding car dweller Martin Colcord says his resilience and resourcefulness have probably worked against him in the struggle to secure a Housing New Zealand home. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Colcord, who’s on good terms with all his adult kids, knows he could probably stay with one of them if push came to shove. However, he wouldn’t want to impose, and they knew he wouldn’t want to live under anyone else’s thumb, he said.

He once owned a boat and happily lived on it, but it broke its mooring during Cyclone Gabrielle and got wrecked against rocks. Although he managed to make it seaworthy again, he was only back on board a short while before it was rammed by another vessel and sank irretrievably in the deep water of Whangārei Harbour. Colcord had no insurance - he couldn’t afford it.

Afterward, he moved into a boarding house situation, but it was challenging. Among the other residents were gang members, parolees, people who were mentally ill and ultimately it was all just too unruly for him, Colcord said.

He wouldn’t contemplate moving to another centre. Northland was “home”.

“Seeing the Hen and Chicken Islands from the top of the Brynderwyns gives me a warm flutter in my heart - I’m home!”

So what options other than waiting in Kāinga Ora New Zealand’s ever-increasing queue for accommodation are there for Whangārei’s homeless? Whose responsibility is it, if anyone’s, to look after their interests?

Whangārei District Council’s manager health and bylaws Reiner Mussle stressed it wasn’t a core council responsibility.

“Persons experiencing homelessness are encouraged to engage with social service providers,” Mussle said.

Council teams were often the first to be called when concerns were raised about people setting up communities or camping or sleeping round on public property.

The calls were usually about “hygiene, alcohol consumption or noise and general safety”.

However, ratepayers were mistaken if they thought council could monitor and infringe the homeless in the way it could freedom campers, Mussle said.

The Freedom Camping Act 2011 clearly defined what freedom camping was and it wasn’t homeless people sleeping rough. Homeless people weren’t subject to any “nightly limits” on where they could stay the way freedom campers were.

Notwithstanding council’s lack of obligation to the city’s homeless, it was “very aware” of their “complex needs and issues”, and “focused on bringing the skills, resources, knowledge and responsibilities of multiple agencies involved in this space together to look for answers”.

Those agencies included MSD, Kāinga Ora, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Arataki Ministries, 155 Whare Āwhina and the New Zealand Police.

* Trade Me data showed the median weekly rent for privately rented homes in Northland had fallen by 1.7 per cent between April and March, this year, settling at $590.

Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in journalism, much of which she spent court reporting. She is passionate about covering stories that make a difference