Homeless welcome ID cards

Homeless people on the streets of Auckland are guardedly welcoming a plan to give them identity cards so they can open bank accounts and apply for state houses.

About 250 to 300 people in the city are believed to be sleeping out with no fixed abode, making it difficult for them to deal with banks, Housing New Zealand, Work and Income and other agencies.

The Auckland Rough Sleepers Liaison Group, representing the church groups and mental health staff working with the homeless, says the city council could issue photo-identity cards to those without driver's licences or other forms of identification.

A member of the group, Auckland City Missioner Diane Robertson, said the card would need to be offered on a voluntary basis

"It would need relationships with Work and Income and a particular bank or two," she said.

The idea was not discussed at a homeless forum convened by the council yesterday, but chairwoman of the council's community development and equity committee Dr Cathy Casey said a card would be a "really simple thing that we could do".

A member of the Auckland City Mission's homeless committee, Huia Taite, said he had to get a statutory declaration witnessed yesterday to open a bank account because he did not have a birth certificate.

"You have to have the money to get a birth certificate, so I guess the card would be okay," he said.

Another homeless man, Ted Maxwell, said he needed a form of identity to apply for a Housing New Zealand flat and an identity card might be "the only way to get it".

Another man, who gave his name as Philip, said Work and Income also needed people to have an address.

"Sometimes they won't deal with you. They say okay, you haven't got any ID, so goodbye," he said.

"If you are lucky enough you use your bank card, but if you haven't got one it's a bit hard."

Busker Toko Rikihana, 60, said the Methodist Mission's Airedale Community Centre provided a place to receive mail, as well as free meals. But Work and Income would not accept the centre as an address to register for welfare benefits and potential jobs.

"I don't mind having an ID card. I've got nothing to hide," he said.

But fellow busker Peter Galvin, 49, said he already had a bank account and driver's licence so he would not need the card. He said he had paid rent for five years, but the expense of $180 a week left him no money to buy food so he was forced to sleep out.

Another man, who declined to give his name, said he already had a driver's licence and a further identity card would be "an invasion of your privacy".

A survey by the Rough Sleepers Liaison Group, tabled at yesterday's meeting, counted 64 people sleeping out within 3km of the Sky Tower between 8pm and 1am on the night of May 5-6 last year.

Four out of five were men, three out of five were Maori or Pacific Islanders and a sixth were 15 to 20.

Mental health worker Lynsey Ellis, who led the 35 volunteers in carrying out the survey, said the exercise missed a lot of homeless people because many did not go to sleep until after 1am. The survey is likely to be repeated this May between midnight and 6am.

Diane Robertson said the true number of homeless in the inner city was probably 250 to 300, sleeping "in parks, at the backs of buildings, behind shops and in abandoned buildings".

"We probably missed places. Homeless people do not necessarily want to be found," she said.

She said the number had roughly doubled in the past five years due to a "breakdown in access to mental health services".

"There has been a tightening of budgets which has had an effect on access to mental health services," she said.

"There is also a delayed effect of policy changes such as deinstitutionalisation. We get issues such as quite a number of people in their forties who have been living with their parents. The parents are now in their eighties and the families can't cope. Those situations cause homelessness."

The council has proposed a budget of $1 million from higher rates to provide low-income housing through joint ventures with agencies such as Housing New Zealand.

Rough sleepers

53 men, 10 women, 1 gender unknown.

39 Maori/Pacific Islanders, 14 European, 2 Asian, 9 ethnicity unknown.

11 aged 15-20, 16 aged 21-30, 14 aged 31-40, 13 aged 41-50, one aged 51-60, 9 age unknown.

22 sleeping rough for more than four years, 9 for one to three years, six for less than one year, 27 unknown.

Source: Auckland Rough Sleepers Liaison Group survey on May 5-6, 2004, within 3km of the Sky Tower.