This is crazy:
Motels given millions to house homeless
Five Auckland motels have received more than $1.3 million of taxpayer money in just three months to house homeless people.
…
The grants are given to people “when all other options are exhausted, to provide a short-term solution”, but Salvation Army social policy unit director Ian Hutson said the situation could have been avoided.“What we’re reaping is related to the lack of early intervention, and ideally we don’t want more and more emergency accommodation, what we want is affordable housing,” Mr Hutson said.
…
In total, the ministry granted 8860 grants to 2616 people in the last quarter of last year – at a total cost of $7,735,788, or an average of about $2.5m per month.Associate Minister for Social Housing Alfred Ngaro said the government was working on other options. …
It’s almost as if deliberately running down state housing stock doesn’t make the need for homes magically go away – who could possibly have predicted that? Having painted themselves into a corner the Nats are reduced to this:
Govt to buy more motels to house homeless as its role in emergency housing grows
The Government will buy up to three more motels and construct modular homes as part of a new $300 million investment in emergency housing.
The huge funding package, announced this afternoon, is designed to lift the number of temporary housing places to 2200 at any one time – up from current levels of 800 places.
Announcing the funding boost at Parliament, Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett said the package was a “gap-filler” until more permanent housing could be built. …
Motels are not state houses – even Bill English knows that:
At the time, Prime Minister Bill English conceded that motels were “not the right place” for homeless people, because many of them had highly complex needs.
You’ve had nine long years to see this coming.
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