KEY POINTS:
It is important that we deal with the facts when discussing the complex issues around homelessness in Auckland's central business district.
There are no plans to "criminalise" homeless people. We don't criminalise citizens who break the city's parking or noise control bylaws. We don't throw them in jail.
No one is suggesting a bylaw that would grant powers to uplift the homeless and either dump them out of town or take them to prison.
It has never been suggested that a bylaw should be the Auckland City Council's sole response to the vexed issue of homelessness. A bylaw, if one proved workable, would target unwanted behaviours, not a section of society.
It would be just one strand of a wide-ranging response to what everyone acknowledges is a difficult and complex issue. The other strands are encompassed by the Homeless Action Plan, in which the city council plays a major role in association with central government and charitable agencies.
There is a problem. The City Mission and the police have both stated recently that homelessness is a serious matter for the city. The men and women who sleep rough on
the streets of Auckland, almost universally, have had their lives blighted by addiction to drugs, alcohol or both, some with untreated mental illness and others with a deep personal crisis. They need support and they need our help.
We should not accept the current situation, when the nation invests significantly in welfare services and there are plenty of beds available right now in the city. Why should we accept that people sleep rough on Queen St, that some will use office entrances and shop doorways as their toilet, that some Aucklanders are wary about walking through Aotea Square and parts of Hobson Street in the middle of the day?
The goal is surely to improve the situation, both for the homeless people themselves and for others who live and work in the city, or visit it. We will make progress by addressing the complex social issues that lie behind rough sleeping. The city council accepts its role here working with the Auckland City Mission, Lifewise, the Ministry of Justice,
the courts, the police, the mental health services, church groups and voluntary agencies. None of this is easy and results will be slow.
We know there is no such entity as "the homeless". Each person on the street has their own circumstances. As well as the homeless there is a criminal element who have been dumped out of prison with little or no supervision to wander our streets.
They have fallen through the cracks of government policy for too long, but thankfully there is widespread determination amongst all parties to improve the response. We also need to deal with the "here and now". Our CBD should be welcoming.
That's why the community should have the right to ask someone who is lying on the pavement in the middle of our city, in the middle of the day - as in the photo published in the Herald last week - to pick up their things and go.
Where? They could sit on a park bench or go to one of the beds available in the city missions. Currently, the legal situation is unclear. A new bylaw, or perhaps amendments to an existing bylaw, may well provide police or council enforcement officers a clearer basis on which to proceed.
I'd expect sanctions under the bylaw would be creative - such as obliging offenders to avail themselves of services or to attend appropriate courses for addiction or other problems.
We're considering a bylaw as part of a series of responses to homelessness not for our convenience, or to make the city look pretty for the Rugby World Cup, but because it is important to set reasonable expectations about what is reasonable behaviour in our public places and what is not.
I will be most interested in what Aucklanders have to say about the issue.
* Paul Goldsmith is a Citizens & Ratepayers councillor and community services chairman for Auckland City.
