In Aotearoa, a Pacific advocate for youth homelessness says the country must address poverty and systemic inequities to fix the housing affordability crisis.

Research from the Salvation Army last month showed one in 1000 people in the country are without shelter. Youth were reportedly disproportionately affected.

Overall, Pasefika communities were also over-represented in the country’s hardship figures. For example, the latest government figures showed the Pacific unemployment rate was 12.1 percent – more than double the national average.

• READ MORE: Other homelessness reports

Brooke Stanley, of youth homelessness collective Manaaki Rangatahi, told RNZ Pacific Waves “successive government choices and policies” had failed to prioritise people’s housing needs.

That had led to rising homelessness, she said.

“I think that those policy choices and decisions are actually underpinned by a certain set of values that don’t recognise housing as being a human right,” Stanley said.

“We’re looking at a politics of ego, of competition, of division, of greed and profit.”

Pasefika bearing brunt
Stanley also said the current government’s policies were making things worse, and Pasefika communities were bearing the brunt of it.

High rents, lack of public housing and affordable housing, as well as socio-economic status all contributed to Pasefika being disproportionately affected by the housing affordability crisis.

Tougher rules from Kāinga Ora — the government’s public housing agency — also painted a bleak picture.

For example, in Manurewa and Porirua, Pacific families were reportedly being kicked out of public housing at disproportionate rates. The pattern was identified in tenancy enforcement data by PMN.

In Manurewa, Pacific families represented about half of the agency’s tenants, but made up three-quarters of enforcement action. In Porirua, Pacific people represented about the same proportion of Kāinga Ora tenants but made up two-thirds of enforcement action.

Enforcement action included tenancy terminations.

Kāinga Ora has previously said it applied its policies in “a fair and consistent way in communities around the country”.

Ending tenancies
Kāinga Ora spokesperson Nick Maling said the decision to end a tenancy was never made lightly, especially when children and young people were involved.

Associate Minister for Housing Tama Potaka has said the government is working to address homelessness.

“There’s a number of things that this government is doing, whether or not it’s the build programme — making sure we build another 500 social homes in Auckland, Māori housing, Kainga Ora… resetting the housing system,” he told RNZ Morning Report in July.

He has also said that rebuilding the economy to create more jobs and get people into work was part of the government’s solution to homelessness.

Stanley believed New Zealand’s policymakers needed to shift their approach to housing and homelessness completely.

“We can’t talk about ending homelessness unless we also talk about ending poverty,” she said.

“I think we need to look at the different contributing factors . . .  [and the] the structural inequities that also contribute to homelessness.

“I think it’s really important that our leaders just not only talk about these things, but also have the actions and policies that reflect those values.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

ANALYSIS: By Susan St John

With the coalition government’s second Budget being unveiled, we should question where New Zealand is heading.

The 2024 Budget laid out the strategy. Tax cuts and landlord subsidies were prioritised with a focus on cuts to social and infrastructure spending. Most of the tax package went to the well-off, while many low-income households got nothing, or very little.

Even the tiny bit of the tax package directed to low-income people fell flat. Family Boost has significantly helped only a handful of families, while the increase of $25 per week (In Work Tax Credit) was denied all families on benefits, affecting about 200,000 of the very poorest children.

• READ MORE: Budget 2025 at a glance: The big changes, winners and losers
• Budget 2025: Pasifika community braces for impact

In the recession, families that lost paid work also lost access to full Working for Families, an income cut for their children of about $100 per week.

No one worked out how the many spending cuts would be distributed, but they have hurt the poor the most. These changes are too numerous to itemise but include increased transport costs; the reintroduction of prescription charges; a disastrous school lunch system; rising rents, rates and insurance; fewer budget advisory services; cuts to foodbank funding and hardship grants; stripping away support programmes for the disabled; inadequately adjusted benefits and minimum wage; and reduced support for pay equity and the living wage.

The objective is to save money while ignoring the human cost. For example, a scathing report of the Auditor General confirms that Oranga Tamariki took a bulldozer to obeying the call for a 6.5 percent cut in existing social services with no regard to the extreme hurt caused to children and struggling parents.

Budget 2025 has already indicated that Working for Families will continue to go backwards with not even inflation adjustments. The 2025 child and youth strategy report shows that over the year to June 2024 the number of children in material poverty continued to increase, there were more avoidable hospitalisations, immunisation rates for babies declined, and there was more food insecurity.

Human costs all around us
We can see the human costs all around us in homelessness, food insecurity, and ill health. Already we know we rank at the bottom among developed countries for child wellbeing and suicide rates.

Abject distress existing alongside where homes sell for $20 million-$40 million is no longer uncommon, and neither are $6 million helicopters of the very rich.

At the start of the year, Helen Robinson, CEO of the Auckland City Mission, had a clear warning: “I am pleading with government for more support, otherwise what we and other food relief agencies in Auckland can provide, will dramatically decrease.

“This leaves more of Auckland hungry and those already there become more desperate. It is the total antithesis of a thriving city.”

The theory held by this government is that by reducing the role of government and taxes, the private sector will flourish, and secure well-paid jobs will be created. Instead, as basic economic theory would predict, we have been handed a long and protracted recession with few signs of growth and prosperity.

Budget 2025 signals more of the same.

It would be a mistake to wait for simplistic official inequality statistics before we act. Our current destination is a sharply divided country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty with an insecure middle class.

Underfunded social agencies
Underfunded and swamped social agencies cannot remove the relentless stress on the people who are invisible in the ‘fiscally responsible’ economic narrative. The fabricated bogeyman of outsized net government debt is at the core, as the government pursues balanced budgets and small government-size targets.

A stage one economics student would know the deficit increases automatically in a recession to cushion the decline and stop the economy spiralling into something that looks more like a depression. But our safety nets of social welfare are performing very badly.

Rising unemployment has exposed the inadequacy of social protections. Working for Families, for instance, provides a very poor cushion for children. Many “working” families do not have enough hours of work and face crippling poverty traps.

Future security is undermined as more KiwiSavers cash in for hardship reasons. A record number of the talented young we need to drive the recovery and repair the frayed social fabric have already fled the country.

The government is fond of comparing its Budget to that of a household. But what prudent household would deliberately undermine the earning capacity of family members?

The primary task for the Budget should be to look after people first, to allow them to meet their food, dental and health needs, education, housing and travel costs, to have a buffer of savings to cushion unexpected shocks and to prepare for old age.

A sore thumb standing
In the social security part of the Budget, NZ Super for all at 65, no matter how rich or whether still in full-time well-paid work, dominates (gross $25 billion). It’s a sore thumb standing out alongside much less generous, highly targeted benefits and working for families, paid parental leave, family boost, hardship provisions, accommodation supplement, winter energy and other payments and subsidies.

Given the political will, research shows we can easily redirect at least $3 billion from very wealthy superannuitants to fixing other payments to greatly improve the wellbeing of the young. This will not be enough but it could be a first step to the wide rebalancing needed.

New Zealand has become a country of two halves whose paths rarely cross: a social time bomb with unimaginable consequences. It is a country beguiled by an egalitarian past that is no more.

Living in the Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby without a house or a source of income is a death sentence, says Raymond Green.

He highlights the struggles of sleeping in the streets, begging for his daily bread and wandering around aimlessly — living a life of quiet desperation.

His advice: Don’t ever borrow money from someone if you don’t have the means to repay them.

• READ MORE: Other PNG poverty reports

According to Raymond Green, he learnt this lesson the hard way when he had to sell off everything under his name to repay his debt.

“I have absolutely nothing. No house, no wife, no money, no valuables and certainly no food in my stomach as we speak,” he told the PNG Post-Courier.

“My struggles cannot be explained by words.

“Every day I have to keep on moving to survive, begging for scraps of food here and there.

Harassment and bullying
“I enjoy the cold nights, but I just wish it could be more peaceful, as there are always people out there who find happiness in harassing and bullying me,” he says.

“I live in pain, agony and desperation. My past haunts me, and my regrets fill me with sorrow.

“Sometimes I wish life could give me a fresh start, but it sadly does not work that way.”

Green doesn’t mince his words when he expresses his daily struggles of being “homeless” and “poor”.

Something he explains that he could have avoided if he had taken the right path when he was younger.

“My daily living is a constant struggle for survival, and I sometimes feel like I am dead inside,” he says.

‘Ultimately have nothing’
“It’s true, being homeless is practically like being dead because you ultimately have nothing.

“All I own can be seen inside my small bag. Everything I had has been either stolen, lost or destroyed somewhere or somehow.”

He says he is waiting for a one off-payment from a certain office, by which he can then use the money for his retirement.

He says there is a high chance he may never receive this payment.

Raymond Green is one of the many who live under extreme poverty conditions, while continuously fighting to survive in Port Moresby.

Theophiles Singh is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

In 1988, our National Housing Commission declared, “New Zealand does not have the huge, insoluble problems of homelessness and substandard housing which confront many other nations.”

This was the final report of the then disestablished commission, which to that point had reported detailed data every five years to keep the country and policy-makers informed about what we had once considered the foundation of stable society — a home for New Zealanders to call their own.

I was born six years after that report, and in those years and across my lifetime, deliberate political choices — specifically, political choices by people sitting in Parliament — have shredded that once-guaranteed housing dignity and stability.

• READ MORE: Greens’ rental price control policy: Davidson rubbishes criticisms
• Green Party’s pledge to renters: What you need to know
• The Green Party housing policy

They traded it for a game of Monopoly, which, the pecuniary interests register tells us, also happens to disproportionately benefit around half of the “representatives” in there with interests in more than one property (notably, approximately just 2 percent of the general population are landlords).

This dire situation is the direct consequence of political decisions, and it is disproportionately hurting the 1.4 million renters in this country that our Parliament, by majority, and as an overwhelming majority of comfortable homeowners, continues to structurally disempower.

In spite of this, we have made some slow progress. In 2017, the Greens worked with Labour to introduce Healthy Homes Standards and a slate of amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, removing no-cause evictions and allowing renters to take claims to the Tenancy Tribunal anonymously.

Some standards, we obviously agreed, were better than nothing. A set of rules means it’s clear how a game should be played, but those rules become pretty meaningless if there’s no consistent referee monitoring and enforcing them.

Compliance not tracked
Unfortunately, that’s what the Healthy Homes Standards have become. My parliamentary written questions last year showed the government isn’t tracking how many private rentals are compliant.

It doesn’t know how many landlords and property managers have decided to self-exclude their properties from compliance. It has no tabs on the cottage industry of companies that have cropped up to verify these standards, let alone the variance in their approaches.

This leaves the third of New Zealanders who rent left to shoulder the burden of enforcing these basic rules which are supposed to protect them.

It’s a funny thing that whenever the Greens mention renters, we’re immediately shouted down and told that the problem is, somehow, that landlords aren’t given enough free rein. That the solution is more commodification of basic human rights.

Ironically, this is exactly what the National Housing Commission warned against back in 1988, that shifting of responsibility from the state to the private sector would, “add little to the total housing supply while allowing private landlords and property speculators to make even higher charges for a non-expanding supply of housing… rais[ing] the purchase price of land and rented property”.

We now know, viscerally, how right they were. Whatever metric you choose, we have the most expensive housing in the world.

The Accommodation Supplement, once rationalised in the state-housing sell-off to help support lower income New Zealanders pushed into the private sector, is now paid out to the tune of $2 billion a year with evidence showing it primarily serves to just bid up rental prices and effectively subsidise private landlords.

Special tax preferential
We remain one of the only countries in the developed world that continues to provide special tax treatment and preference to properties, incentivising the flow of capital into unproductive property speculation, or what University of Auckland researchers called, “a politically condoned, finance-fuelled casino”.

In less than 40 years, political decisions have not only made housing one of the major drivers of poverty and inequality in this country, but one of the major determinants of both physical and mental health, not to mention education achievement and school attendance.

So, who pays the cost?

Most immediately, it’s the 1.4 million renting New Zealanders, who Statistics New Zealand tells us spend more of their income on older, smaller, mouldier, lower quality housing.

Renting is no longer a transient state — unless you’re talking about the literal transience which sees renters in this country maintaining their tenancies for, on average, just 16 months at a time.

Almost all of us will know families with children and friends in their 30s and 40s who are flatting. A quarter of retirees don’t own their own home.

This didn’t happen overnight. It happened within a generation of political decisions that sold our human right to housing to the highest bidder.

As depressing as that may be, it makes clear that the status quo is not an inevitability. It can and must change if we want any hope of a fairer society.

The good news is the Greens have unveiled our plan to fix it all.

Chlöe Swarbrick is the Green Party MP for Auckland Central. This article was originally published in The New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Deception and political spin crossed new boundaries this week with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, under pressure to explain the housing catastrophe in Rotorua, making the absurd statement:

“Our long-term plan is to get them into sustainable, long-term safe housing. It’s why for instance we’ve worked so hard to now have built 10 percent of all the state houses in New Zealand.”

Meaningless, ludicrous and irrelevant.

• READ MORE: Christopher Luxon denies National government’s actions caused state housing supply issue
• TVNZ’s Sunday showed devastating scenes from Rotorua and the enduring power of TV

Why was she not challenged by journalists on this preposterous statement?

The government has been demolishing state houses almost as fast as it builds them so that the net increase in state houses over the last five years stands at a piddling 1100 per year for a waiting list of 26,664. The waiting list has increased five-fold since Labour came to power in 2017.

Labour is taking us backwards on state housing at a spectacular rate.

And neither is it the fault of the previous National government. Labour has kept the policy settings for state house building the same as applied under National — right down to maintaining the same tough criteria to enable a low-income tenant or family to get on the waiting list.

Largest Labour privatisation since 1980s
The awful reason Labour is demolishing state houses and selling the land is to provide funding for Kainga Ora. The government doesn’t want to borrow to build, which any sensible government would, so it is forcing Kainga Ora to sell land and properties to do this.

It’s the largest privatisation of state assets by Labour since the 1980s.

Where are the journalists to put some simple questions to the Prime Minister?

• Why has Labour allowed the state house waiting list to INCREASE FIVE FOLD (from 5,000 in late 2017 to over 26,000 in 2022) with no effective policy response?
• Why does Labour still think it’s OK to produce just 1,100 net new state houses per year for a state house waiting list of over 26,000? (When Labour came to power there were 63,209 state houses which has increased to just 68,765 by June this year).
• Why are the number of children living in grotty motels STILL INCREASING?
• Why is the number of children living in cars STILL INCREASING?
• Why are the number of children in tents STILL INCREASING?
• Why is Labour still ONLY FUNDING 1600 new IRRS places (for state house and social housing providers combined) each year for the more than 26,000 families on the state house waiting list?
• Why does Labour still think it’s OK to keep the proportion of state house at just 3.6% of total housing stock when it was 5.4 percent in 1990?
• Why has Labour not instigated an industrial-scale state house building programme such as the first Labour government did in the 1930s? (Labour then built 3500 state houses each year – equivalent to 10,000 today on a population basis).
• Why is the government planning to sell 55 to 60 percent of crown land in Auckland to private property developers when we have a housing catastrophe for low-income New Zealanders?

Where are the journalists to expose this prime ministerial spin?

Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

By RNZ’s The Weekend with Karyn Hay

The K Road Chronicles is a New Zealand webseries that delves into what it is like to be homeless on the streets of inner city Auckland.

Now in its second season, the show is hosted by Six – who knows the experience of homelessness firsthand, having lived on the streets for six years.

Six, an AUT journalism graduate and founder of the K Road Chronicle newspaper for homeless people, joins Karyn in the studio to discuss making the series.

• LISTEN to Six on The Weekend with Karyn Hay (Duration 30′:03″)
• K Road newspaper to focus on stories from the street
• ‘A journalist is nothing without values,’ says community editor

By Jessie Chiang, RNZ News reporter

Living on the fringes
FLASHBACK TO 2017 REPORT: Homeless people and those living on the fringes in central Auckland have their own newspaper for the first time.

K Road Chronicle tells the stories of the Karangahape Road community.

The Chronicle’s editor, Six, said the monthly newspaper was about giving the homeless a voice and breaking down any prejudices the public may have about them.

“It educates the wider audience on who these people are and what they’re stories are and what’s significant to them,” she said.

“Even though it focuses mainly on K Road and stories from the street, it’s about everybody who uses the street whether they live there or work there.”

So far 1000 copies have been printed and are being given free to those sleeping rough to sell.

Six said just the other day she gave a few copies to someone on the street to sell and it was rewarding to see the difference it made.

“He sat up and he was excited to be giving out these newspapers and I think it gave him a purpose,” she said.

“I caught up with him a few hours later and I said, ‘how’s it going?’ and he said, ‘I made 20 bucks’ and that’s great because he could be sitting there all there and make five or 10 dollars.”

Rob, who usually asks for money on K Road, has also been selling the Chronicle.

He said it was great to be able to offer people something that represented him as well as putting money in his pocket.

“They give me koha and before they read it, they ask me what it’s all about so I explain it to them,” he said.

“I say it’s all about the community and [it’s] ideas and thoughts.”

The newspaper was started with initial funding from the K Road Business Association.

“This publication really identifies the community and speaks to the community enhancement aspect of what we do,” said manager Michael Richardson. “It really speaks to what happens here at Karangahape Road.

Richardson said he was in talks with other organisations which were keen to donate funds to the newspaper.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Green Party delegates have voted to accept a deal with Labour which will give it two ministerial portfolios outside of cabinet in the New Zealand government.

Consensus was blocked, so the party required 75 percent of delegates to get the deal across the line this evening.

Labour offered the Green Party the two portfolios as part of a cooperation agreement.

• READ MORE: NZ Greens accept Ardern’s offer of ‘cooperation agreement’
  
• Labour and Greens formally sign cooperation agreement

BREAKING: We’re thinking ahead by acting now. Today we’re proud to launch our bold new vision for the future that resets and reimagines Aotearoa so all of us and our planet thrive. pic.twitter.com/oOGjU5VnHO

— Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) July 25, 2020

Yesterday’s vote to accept the deal came after several rounds of talks on potential areas of cooperation between the two parties concluded on Thursday.

About 150 Green Party delegates were presented the deal on a zoom call, before voting on whether to accept it.

Green Party delegates were also told the two select committees Green MPs will chair or deputy chair will likely be Environment and Transport, RNZ understands.

As part of the proposed cooperation agreement, Labour will support the nomination of a Green MP to be the chair of a select committee, as well as a Green MP in the deputy chair role of an additional select committee.

Green Party co-leaders
The ministerial portfolios will be held by the Green Party’s co-leaders, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern revealed this afternoon.

James Shaw will continue as Climate Change Minister and be appointed Associate Minister for the Environment (Biodiversity), while Marama Davidson will be the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence and Associate Minister of Housing (Homelessness).

Despite a landslide election victory for her Labour Party, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Saturday that the Green Party would be given two ministerial positions to help advance their “shared goals”https://t.co/cY7m3bVrX1

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 31, 2020

In a statement, Davidson said the Green Party was “thrilled” to enter into this governing arrangement with Labour.

“We entered into this negotiation hoping to achieve the best outcomes for New Zealand and our planet. This was after a strong campaign where we committed to action on the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the poverty crisis.

“New Zealanders voted us in to be a productive partner to Labour to ensure we go further and faster on the issues that matter. We will make sure that happens this term.”

Shaw said the Greens had a larger caucus this term, who were ready to play a constructive role.

“In the areas of climate change, looking after our natural environment and addressing inequality, there’s no time to waste. Marama will do incredible work rapidly addressing the issues of homelessness and family violence,” he said.

‘First in NZ political history’
“We are proud to have achieved a first in New Zealand political history, where a major party with a clear majority under MMP has agreed to ministerial positions for another party, as well as big areas of cooperation.”

Areas of co-operation will be: “achieving the purpose and goals of the Zero Carbon Act” through decarbonising public transport and the public sector, increasing the uptake of zero-emission vehicles, introducing clean car standards, and supporting the use of renewable energy for industrial heat.

As well as protecting the environment and biodiversity, and improving child wellbeing and action on homelessness, warmer homes, and child and youth mental health.

In return the Greens will not oppose the government on confidence and supply for the full term of this Parliament, and support Labour on procedural motions in the House and at select committees

But the Greens will be free to take their own position on any issues not covered by the ministerial portfolios and areas of co-operation.

Ardern said in the interests of transparency, Labour was releasing the deal publicly in tandem with the Greens’ deliberations.

“On election night I said I wanted to govern for all New Zealanders and to reach as wide a consensus on key issues as possible. This agreement does that, while honouring the mandate provided to Labour to form a majority government in our own right.

Balancing two key objectives
“The cooperation agreement balances these two objectives, whilst not committing to a more formal coalition or confidence and supply arrangement.”

Ardern said strong, stable government was essential to New Zealand as it recovered from covid.

“Between this agreement and our existing parliamentary majority, we won’t be held back from getting on with the work needed to rebuild our economy and continuing to keep New Zealand safe from covid-19.

She said policy areas where Labour and the Greens could work together were places where the policy and experience of the Greens would provide a positive contribution to the Labour government, but without any requirement for either party to have to reach consensus.

“James knows climate change inside out, his expertise in this complex and detailed policy area is an important skill set to tap into, and he has a range of domestic and international stakeholder relationships that are important to maintain.

“Stability and predictability in climate change policy I see as key, and that has also been feedback that I’ve picked up from stakeholders ranging from environmental NGOs to the business community.”

On Davidson’s role, she said Green MP Jan Logie had led the work on family and sexual violence as an undersecretary, and it was at an “important phase of implementation”.

Addressing a national shame
“Again, continuity on addressing this area of national shame is at the front of my mind. It’s also my strong believe that this is an area which should be a ministerial portfolio in it’s own right, and so that’s what we’re doing.”

She said the agreement struck the right balance of the parties working on issues where there is agreement, “allowing space for disagreement and independence, delivering business continuity and predictability in key policy areas, especially climate policy, and guaranteeing that Labour’s majority is bolstered on key votes to ensure the ongoing stability of the majority government.

“Never before has one party won a majority under MMP, but that’s not to say that the principals of MMP should be ignored. Furthermore it is also simply not how I do politics.”

She said she would not have invested time and energy in this agreement unless she thought it was in the best interests of the government and also for New Zealand.

“My view is there are skills and talents that exist in other parties in Parliament, I want to make use of those from the Green Party, and work on policy areas in which there are skills and expertise as well, it makes sense for New Zealand to do that. At the same time though, I will use the mandate that we’ve been given.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

As more cases of Covid-19 arise, New Zealanders are being cautioned to work from home or stay home if sick – but what if you don’t have a home?

Agencies working with New Zealand’s homeless community worry that people living on the street will be left behind, if there is a community outbreak of Covid-19.

Wellington-based rough sleeper Rueben has been living on the streets on and off for five years.

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• Pacific roundup by Pacific Media Watch
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He currently sleeps at a school overnight but said if there is a community outbreak, there are not many options for self-isolation.

Rueben said word is getting out on the street about the virus but threat of community outbreak is not top of mind.

“We’ve actually got worries of our own, to go through each day. It’s bottom of our priority list.”

While Rueben may not be so worried yet about an outbreak, the Archdeacon of St Peter’s Anglican Church on Willis Street, Stephen King, is.

‘Extremely ill’
“We will have people who are extremely ill, whose place of shelter will be St Peter’s, or the doorways that they sleep in.”

The church, built in 1878, has a long history of helping the homeless community, or as Archdeacon King describes “the least, the last and the lost”.

“We have that discussion about people hunkering down and isolating themselves until the illness passes. For some people there is nowhere and so what happens to them?”

Archdeacon King said rough sleepers already struggle to exercise precautions such as sanitising and social distancing.

And he adds that, even if accommodation was made available for self-isolation, continuing to care for people in that situation is a problem.

“That works fine for us if we have a partner or a parent or a child who can help us do that and recover. For those that don’t have that, where does that help come from?”

He said it will not come from hospitals, because they will be at capacity.

Equip, train volunteers
Archdeacon King said government agencies need to equip and train volunteers to continue services, if there is a lock-down period.

Plans are brewing, he said, but he is concerned about how it will play out.

“There are so many things being planned for at the moment as we head further into this crisis, that I just don’t want to see that the most vulnerable miss out on the plan.”

Up in central Auckland, Lifewise’s Peter Shimwell said they are giving their street whānau phones and sim cards to make sure they do not become disconnected.

He said Lifewise is a face-to-face service, so there is concern over how to maintain those connections with people so they are not “left behind and further disconnected”.

“At times like these we need to think outside of the box, in terms of city hotels and whether we have the capacity to unlock some of those.”

Indictment of society
Stephanie McIntyre of DCM – another Wellington faith-based group working with rough sleepers – said it is an indictment on New Zealand’s society that people are even in this position.

“The upshot of that, is that in this environment now, when we really need people to be safely home in their houses, we’ve got a very vulnerable group in our population, who are community members and might literally be left out in the cold.”

All the community organisations hope that empty motels will be opened up for rough sleepers to self-isolate, if need be.

McIntyre said that now is not the time to be worrying about growing motel bills.

She said that DCM is also checking to see if people have phones and can provide one if needed. But she hopes the Ministry of Social Development will ensure people do have a phone and sim card, so that they can be contacted.

Wellington City Council’s Manda Grubner said the council is concerned about how Covid-19 will affect the homeless community.

“It’s very difficult to maintain hygiene and do the things we are telling everyone to do, such as stay home.”

Food distribution
She said the council is reaching out to agencies working directly with homeless communities, including food distribution organisations, to figure out what support they need.

Grubner said the council has implemented its emergency welfare response and has had “all hands-on-deck” calling hotels to see who could accommodate people.

Auckland Council’s Christine Olsen said the council is mindful that people rough sleeping often have more health problems than the rest of the public.

She said it is working with agencies closely and considering making toilet and washing facilities available, as well as charging stations to keep phones charged.

Olsen said the council has talked with the City Mission to come up with contingency plans including to ensure the daily meal, which feeds between 300-400 people a day, is still provided.

The Ministry of Social Development is urging anyone sleeping rough to get in touch.

Emergency housing
In a statement, its spokesperson George Van Ooyen said “nobody needs to sleep rough, and every day we provide emergency accommodation for those in need, including those who have been sleeping rough”.

“We currently work with around 400 emergency housing suppliers each day to support over 2600 households with their urgent housing needs.

“We are supporting the Housing and Urban Development Ministry in its leadership of the Homelessness Action Plan.”

The government’s Covid-19 website includes a set of guidelines for homeless shelters to refer to.

Eva Corklett’s is RNZ’s housing reporter. This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs)

An Auckland journalist and editor is practising true community journalism by sharing the stories of the city’s most marginalised and vulnerable people.

Former Auckland University of Technology journalism student Six is editor of the K’Road Chronicle, a community newspaper capturing the essence and eccentricities of Auckland’s colourful Karangahape Road which serves as home to so many homeless.

A self-described over-qualified, under-employed journalist, Six knows the road as if it were her home. It was for a time; she spent several years living on the streets.

READ MORE: Pacific research of ‘hard’ social issues profiled in new publication

She told Pacific Media Watch this experience gave her a unique perspective to write stories about other rough sleepers for the K’Road Chronicle – some of which have been made into a popular video series through a partnership with Stuff.

“It’s about building trust when I speak with them,” she says.

“I sit alongside them. Their story is my story.”

Supportive AUT staff
While no longer homeless, Six was living on the streets during her time studying at AUT, a difficult period that she says was made easier with the support of the staff on her course.

“There was Greg Treadwell, Helen Sissons. Big respect for David Robie and his wife Del too, if it wasn’t for their support I’m not sure if I would have gotten through,” she says.

“Even the security guards, after I lost my key card and couldn’t afford to pay the $15 or whatever it was for the new one, they knew me and would let me in the building after hours.

“And they even turned a blind eye when I’d occasionally spend the night on one of the couches.”

Head of AUT’s journalism department and Six’s former lecturer, Dr Greg Treadwell, says that her homelessness would have made her studies particularly challenging.

“There were rumours that she was sleeping down on the tenth floor [at the Pacific Media Centre], but I never went down to check.

“So, if that was the level of support through inaction then I’m very happy to have provided that support.”

Social justice journalism
He says that such an experience would have bolstered her journalism with a strong sense of social justice.

“Her heart was always in the homeless community in many ways. And if there’s an advocacy journalism that’s appropriate, then the journalism that advocates for the homeless is fundamentally good journalism.

“If journalism speaks for the voiceless then the homeless have got to be the most voiceless in society.”

After graduating, Six had trouble finding work in the mainstream media, a problem that many journalism graduates are facing.

Her employment troubles led her down other avenues, and while sitting on K’Road one day she realised the wealth of stories that she could find through street locals. After pitching the idea and securing some initial funding from the K Road Business Association, the Chronicle was spawned.

Cult following
Now in its second year, the newspaper has attracted a cult following within the community and beyond.

“I can’t keep up with demand,” Six says. “I’m even getting asked for copies from AUT and the library.”

Other than sharing important stories, the paper is also providing employment for some K’Road locals who get given copies to sell themselves and keep the earnings, something that Dr Treadwell says is another reason why the Chronicle is a valuable asset for the homeless community.

He also says Six’s inability to find work in the mainstream media ultimately proved to be a service to journalism.

“I think it pushed Sister Six in the right direction,” he says.

“I personally think that the orthodoxy of mainstream newsrooms was never going to make her happy, she’s much more of an advocate than that.

“So what she’s doing now is hugely valuable and helpful for society but also probably at this stage really good for her because she’s experienced the lacking of things in life, of comfort and so on.

“She knows what it’s like.”

Gonzo journalism
A fan of American journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Six likens the type of work she does to Thompson’s Gonzo journalism, a style in which the writer becomes so involved with the subject and the subject’s world that he or she actually becomes part of the story.

Treadwell agrees.

“She’s the classic gonzo journalist in a lot of ways.

“She’s much more concerned with outcomes than process, much more interested in shining lights on injustice than necessarily following all the petty rules of the bureaucracy.

“Every city needs a sister six.”

The need for Six’s work is perhaps greater than ever. According to the Auckland Council the number of people classified as “homeless” in Auckland is 20,296. The number of people literally living without shelter day to day is 771.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie agrees, saying that the K’Road Chronicle came at a critical time.

Paper for the voiceless
“It was an excellent and exciting initiative to start the K’Road Chronicle – not only is homelessness a growing problem in Auckland, but until this publication started the homeless were voiceless as well,” he says.

During her time at AUT, Six filed stories on diversity for the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Scoop project.

Dr Robie says the type of diversity reporting that Six is doing is an example for all journalists.

“Journalists should be supporting the voiceless, marginalised and stigmatised far more than they do. The mainstream media are far too close to power and should be far more challenging.

“Six and her community should be congratulated for taking up the challenge – journalism that cares.”

Caring is certainly a value, among others that Six employs in her work.

Journalism values
She says that any journalist can write advertorials or sensationalist articles but it takes a special set of values to write stories about those living on the fringes of society.

Resilience, persistence, resourcefulness, pragmatism and positivity are what enables her to get through life and do the work she does.

“A journalist is nothing without values,” she says.