Homelessness won’t be helped, or harmed, with a pie and a Coke – Editorial

The streeties, the people who shelter in shop doorways in the city centre or in ramshackle structures in our local park, evoke the strongest feeling from the community, likely due to their visible and unavoidable presence in public areas.

Editorial

THE FACTS

• An estimated 112,496 people are homeless or experiencing severe housing deprivation, similar to Lower Hutt’s population.
• This was an increase from the 99,462 people estimated in 2018.
• 61.3% of those living in severe housing deprivation were in uninhabitable housing, the data showed.

To feed, or not to feed: that is the question.

Homeless folk abound in this country we call God’s Own.

In the 2023 Census, an estimated 112,496 people were homeless or experiencing “severe housing deprivation”.

For reference, that’s roughly the population of Lower Hutt.

title="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/homelessness-in-nz-the-christmas-reality-is-theres-no-room-at-the-inn-for-kiwis-needing-help/BPRSLBGA5ZDHFNKWFKCN6FNC2Y/">That number is not just streeties, of course. It also covers people who are living in refuges and shelters, those in garages and caravans, the people sleeping in their cars and the couch surfers.

But it’s the streeties, the people who shelter in shop doorways in the city centre or in ramshackle structures in our local park, who evoke the strongest feeling from the community, likely due to their visible and unavoidable presence in public areas.

Streeties are in all of New Zealand’s major city centres – and in some of its small towns as well.

In a country with welfare and state housing, it can be hard to imagine how anyone could end up on the streets.

Therefore, common sentiment says, being a streetie must be a lifestyle choice; a choice a deviant makes so they can flout societal obligations and take drugs with abandon. A choice to eschew a productive life with a 9-to-5 job, two-and-a-half kids and a white picket fence, in order to indulge one’s selfish whims in the face of common decency.

And that sentiment brings with it the debate over whether or not giving streeties food and money is help – or enablement.

One Rotorua resident at a public meeting last week described giving food to homeless people as “a kitten will keep coming back if you keep feeding it”.

But a Salvation Army worker at the same meeting said she treated the homeless like whānau and she would not stop feeding them.

“It’s about manaakitanga [hospitality, kindness],” she said.

Streeties aren’t going to have all their problems solved with a pie and a Coke. But starving them also won’t put a roof over their heads.

In a Whanganui Chronicle column in March, Community House Whanganui manager Shelley Loader said: “As a society, we maintain a mainstream belief that chronic homelessness and associated antisocial behaviour is a choice. We are not getting this right.”

Loader said chronic homelessness, a term that refers to people who had been homeless for more than a year or have had frequent bouts of homelessness, had “strong correlations with mental illness, substance abuse, disabilities and medical conditions”.

Whether these people choose to live their lives on the street or not, the fact remains: they are people.

They are people who need help, whether that is help with food and money, or help with their mental health and addiction issues.

That’s a societal problem. To feed or not to feed may be the question of the masses.

But a true solution to chronic homelessness comes down to whether the powers-that-be will step in to offer meaningful change.

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