She was advising people in that situation to treat it like a loan and, when things improve, to pay it back by increasing their contributions.
“It is usually met with quite a good reaction from the people I’m dealing with. The fact that they can see there might be enough good in the future that they can up their contributions and still end up with enough money.”
The second was the number of people presenting with huge loans to Work and Income.
“I used to see people coming in regularly owing Work and Income $1500, $2000, now they are coming in owing $15,000. Twenty-seven thousands dollars I had somebody owe yesterday.
“Basically Work and Income were between a rock and a hard place because they had been told categorically they can’t say ‘no’. If it is a genuine request you can’t say ‘no’.
“In the old days, after a third request, they had to tell the client to come and see budget advice and we could work with them on it.”
Upston said there were a number of changes made about five years ago, including removing the requirement for people to see a budget service before getting a third Winz loan.
“Then there were a number of other changes during Covid which were probably necessary that then didn’t get turned back.”
Holland said the other issue was the high cost of rental housing and she gave the example of a mother and her baby who were paying $700 a week for a fixed-term rental that was due to expire at the end of October.
“It is huge, it was the only house she could get, it’s four bedroom for her and her baby but it is a fixed term tenancy that finishes 27th of this month and she can’t go on the social housing register until she is actually living in her car or sleeping on someone’s couch with a baby.
“She is not allowed to actually start the process until she is homeless and in the meantime she’s got furniture in the house that she is either going to have to put in storage or sell because she can’t take that with her in a car or to her mate’s house or sister’s house, where her sister is living in a two-bedroom house already with four children of her own.”
Taupō Budget Advisory Service manager Christine Singer said the emergency housing situation had actually improved in recent times.
“It is better than it was because of the situation where we are now only down to, I think it’s one motel, and there was at one stage just two people in that motel.”
Upston said the focus for the government was to get children out of emergency housing.
“That is one of our targets ... the housing teams at MSD [Ministry for Social Development] have done phenomenal work to get the number reduced so quickly but what has happened is 30% of those coming out of emergency housing are going into the private rental market.”
Holland said the young mother she had been working with had been given the name of three motels that did rooms at $600 or $700 a week that she could apply for.
“That means Work and Income are having to top up her income so she can afford to pay that but they can’t top it up enough to cover it so other things have to go.”
She said rental costs in Taupō were similar to larger centres where the rental subsidies were much greater.
Upston said a review of the accommodation supplement was under way.
The Taupō Budget Advisory Service was also more older people coming in for help, especially when their spouse had died, and that person had traditionally done the finances.
Singer said she was not a big fan of reverse mortgages for older people to pay their bills.
“We would rather sort something else out in their budget. We can get them doing something else and get them a food parcel if we have to. But when you get to that stage a lot of people are too proud to take a food parcel and that’s the problem.”
She said it was important for people to see an adviser early if they were struggling and they provided a range of services, right up to the Total Money Management programme.
