Why are so many Kiwis sleeping rough?

Homelessness is becoming a major issue in New Zealand. File photo / Warren Buckland

Editorial

EDITORIAL

A new report that finds New Zealand has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the developed world makes for concerning reading.

The paper by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has more than 2 per cent of Kiwis recorded as homeless – at least by their definition.

It includes refugees and asylum seekers looking for temporary accommodation, as well as victims of domestic violence, which most other countries don’t feature.

The OECD paper released last week ranks New Zealand seventh among the 38-member bloc’s countries, with a little more than 13 people per 10,000 in emergency accommodation, and just under one per 10,000 sleeping rough.

But a walk through any of our major cities’ CBDs will reinforce those figures, with high numbers of rough sleepers in shop doorways, under bridges and in alleyways.

Even as the mercury plummets and we enter the winter months, there are a large number of homeless in the southern centres, including Christchurch, and Dunedin, where there is currently an encampment of tents dotted through the Kensington Oval sports ground.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop this week said he suspected the OECD numbers have “got worse since 2018″, especially with the explosion in emergency housing in recent years.

But he said the figures show there is a “housing crisis” in New Zealand.

“Housing is too expensive right across the housing continuum: for first-home buyers, for people shifting house, for people in social housing, for people renting,” Bishop said.

“Very unfortunately, that means for people at the hard edge of the market there is entrenched homelessness and inequality.”

A University of Otago-led study published last month in the International Journal on Homelessness, perhaps unsurprisingly, found that being supported to find a home and then receiving ongoing specialised support services was the key combination in significantly improving the wellbeing of people who had experienced homelessness.

Researchers said there had been a dramatic improvement in both the physical and mental health of those housed through the People’s Project, which was set up in Hamilton in 2014, with a second service now in Tauranga.

It had resulted in significant drops in the number of hospitalisations for the group of people involved, as well as massive drops in the number of run-ins with police.

“From our experience, we see every day that the Housing First approach works, and that many people’s lives improve over time with consistent specialist support,” People’s Project Hamilton general manager Kerry Hawkes said.

With it appearing that the Government is looking to scrap its support of first-home grants in favour of putting more money toward social housing, the hope is that it will also help address our homelessness problem.

But more money and resources needs to go directly to organisations and groups like the People’s Project that specialise in the issue.

The sight of people begging and sleeping rough on the streets of New Zealand is a jarring and upsetting scene, which appears to be getting worse.

We simply must do better and keep people in warm, safe homes and get them back into society.