Homelessness to reach a new crisis point this winter

Love Soup Rotorua help feed Rotorua's homeless and needy every night of the week. 24 June 2016 Rotorua Daily Post Photograph by Ben Fraser RGP 03Sep16 - HOMELESS: Love Soup Rotorua not only

Emergency housing providers are warning our homelessness is on track to reach a new crisis point this winter with record numbers of families predicted to have nowhere to live.

James Crow from Gimme Shelter is calling on the government to create an effective national strategy to end homelessness, and make it an ongoing priority by creating a dedicated ministerial portfolio.

More than 10,000 New Zealanders have signed a petition in support.

Crow and ActionStation are going to Parliament to deliver the petition this afternoon.

Representatives of the AUT Human Rights campaign group ''The Voice for Homeless Youth'' will speak.

Labour Party Deputy Leader Jacinda Ardern and MP Phil Twyford are accepting the petition and will table the petition at Parliament.

"I used to live in New York and I remember while I was living there I worked briefly in a soup kitchen, and there would be times when I would think 'thank goodness that New Zealand doesn't have the scale of this issue'.

"But when I came home, just working even very briefly in the Auckland Central area it really occurred to me that actually our youth homelessness had been a problem for a while, except it was hidden," Ardern said ahead of the petition presentation.

Crow said New Zealand was way behind in actively planning around homelessness compared to other countries.

"We are in a crisis that's been in the public eye for more than 12 months and little strategy has been shown by the government," he said. "It's time to up our game."

ActionStation campaign director Laura O'Connell Rapira said everyone deserved a warm, dry, safe home.

"The government needs to create a coherent strategy for ensuring that every single person has a roof over their head," she said.

Kaikoura Labour candidate Janette Walker said there was "an increasing surge in the level of homelessness and housing deprivation in Marlborough, because this Government has gone full steam ahead in selling off state houses.

"In my region, $1.7 million has been realised in the sale of state houses. Not one cent has been reinvested into the region with new builds."

Master's of human rights student Emily Griffins said the government needed to take the lead and acknowledge homelessness existed and that it was a human rights issue.