Government contributes to developing homeless crisis

Written By: - Date published: 1:23 pm, August 25th, 2024 - 3 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, housing, national, same old national, spin, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags:

There is increasing concern that recently introduced policy changes by National have made housing for the most needy amongst us more tenuous.

On Morning Report Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was asked last Monday to point to a specific policy that had improved race relations rather than worsened race relations.

He said this:

What I would say to you is when we have lifted a thousand children out of hotels between April and July and actually got them out of motels with a 32% reduction in people living in emergency housing.

The claim was previously made by Housing Minister Tama Potaka and feels like a well designed talking point.

From RNZ’s Mediawatch:

On 11 August, associate housing minister Tama Potaka delivered some good news on emergency housing numbers, announcing they’d dropped 32 percent in this term of government.

He got the desired headline from the Waikato Times and the other Stuff papers, which ran with ‘1000 fewer children in emergency accommodation, associate housing minister reveals’. 

But in the story, Potaka stops short of saying all those children were actually in a better form of housing, instead telling the paper 300 are in private accommodation and 500 in “some form of social housing”.

That raises questions, chief among them: what about the other 200 children? 

Immediately after Luxon’s interview was aired Radio New Zealand ran a story about how the Government was warned that its crackdown on emergency housing risked making more people homeless.

The report was based on this Cabinet Paper which said:

There is the risk that measures to tighten [Emergency Housing] gateways could result in increased levels of rough sleeping, people living in cars, overcrowding in homes, and impact Māori in much higher numbers due to already disproportionate numbers accessing [Emergency Housing]. It could also potentially have significant impacts on children if access to [Emergency Housing] was declined.

And in a classic case of see no evil hear no evil a requirement for the Ministry of Social Development to consider whether declining an emergency housing application would risk someone’s life or welfare, or cause serious hardship was removed.

And the trend is already heading in the wrong direction. From Lauren Crimp at Radio New Zealand:

Homelessness was already on the rise in Wellington, said Downtown Community Ministry director Stephen Turnock, who works with people experiencing homelessness.

The need for emergency housing continued to grow, but it was tougher to access, he said.

“What we’re seeing now is that the line’s been clearly drawn, there’s no intent to increase the availability of emergency housing, yet at the same time we’re seeing a definite increase in the … numbers of people experiencing homelessness.

“Therefore, more people are remaining homeless, and rough sleeping on the streets.”

In the first three months of the year, DCM knew of 52 people sleeping rough – but that leapt to 73 in the three months to the end of June, Turnock said.

National’s confidence and claims of success needs to be seriously questioned. And it is clearly using designed talking points and statistics to present a good news story when the reality could be completely different.

3 comments on “Government contributes to developing homeless crisis ”

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  1. ianmac 1
    25 August 2024 at 4:38 pm

    According to the Douglas Luxon-Seymour doctrine, you move in quantum leaps. By the time your opponents catch up with what you’re doing, you’re on to the next thing.

    And it seems to work given the speed of changes made by the CoC.
    Except for today?
    “The Government has gutted the controversial ministerial powers from the fast-track legislation after major public outcry.

    • Chris 1.1
      26 August 2024 at 11:24 am

      "The Government has gutted the controversial ministerial powers from the fast-track legislation after major public outcry"

      A major part of neo-liberal strategy is to always be on the lookout for u-turns that help maintain the perception of democracy so they can say they're 'listening to the people'.

  2. thinker 2
    26 August 2024 at 7:07 am

    Luxon's happy for others to sleep in cars but the mansion set aside for his use isn't good enough for him.

    I once slept in a car, not through poverty, thank God, but because the weather was too stormy to get the tent up on a camping trip. That would have been around 1982 and it was such that I still remember how cold and unsafe it felt.

    Democracy? Yeah right.