Government's decision's increase homelessness / A.J Hendry

PM's claim that the Government is doing "everything we can" to respond to homelessness, not in step with reality!

This week Auckland Council wrote to the Government warning of a dramatic 53% increase of people sleeping rough in the city.

In response, the Prime Minister and his associate Minister of Housing Tama Potaka, have continued to argue that the Government's decision's to restrict access to Emergency Housing have had no roll to play in this growing crisis.

The Prime Minister went further, arguing in a recent response to Green Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick during question time in the house that Government was doing "Everything it can” to respond to homelessness and is making good progress.

And yet the reality is quite different.

Since coming into Government the coalition has created increased barriers to Emergency Housing, making it near impossible to access shelter and leaving people vulnerable and out on the street.

They have made it harder to survive on the benefit, making it easier to sanction people, cutting already structurally marginalized people off from their only source of income and increasing their risk of homelessness.

They have stalled Public Housing Builds (putting more pressure on the already limited Public Housing available) and made it easier to evict people from Public Housing. They have brought back 'No Cause evictions', making tenants less secure in their own homes. They have cut 20 million dollars worth of funding that was tagged towards providing housing for rangatahi experiencing homelessness, they have gotten rid of the Minister of Homelessness and gutted the Homelessness Action Plan.

As a result frontline services, such as Kick Back are seeing more people sleeping rough, left in dangerous and vulnerable situations.

It is really important for us to understand that this increase in rough sleeping identified by Auckland Council is not an accident but a result of some very deliberate choices by this Government to deny people access to shelter in order to save money to pay for tax cuts which largely have benefited the rich.

The Emergency Housing reforms is the clearest example we have of how a political decision made in Wellington can quickly impact on people across the country, increasing the risk and severity of homelessness and putting more of us at greater risk of sleeping on the streets.

The Government was advised by those serving our whānau who experience homelessness that their decisions would result in more people sleeping rough and make people's experience of homelessness more severe and dangerous. They decided to ignore that advise.

Frontline services across the country are now warning that people are getting hurt as a result of this policy! The consequences being measured in the suffering and trauma of our people.

And yet, despite the growing evidence to the contrary, Min. Tama Potaka continues to argue that anyone who needs shelter urgently can access it.

This is clearly not the case. And yet, if he believes the Government's policy is sound than it is critical that he calls on the Minister for Social Development, Louise Upston, to launch an immediate and urgent review of MSD's implementation of this policy to assess what is going wrong at an operational level within MSD, because the reality our whānau are experiencing is completely contrary to the Ministers claims.

If the policy is sound (and that is a big if), yet people are walking into Work & Income in critical and urgent need, are being denied support by MSD, and than turned away and in some cases being left to sleep on the streets as a result, than questions need to be asked of the Minister for Social Development about what is going on within her ministry!

Winter is coming, and urgent action is needed to turn this around and ensure that everyone who needs support to secure shelter, can access it!

It's now critical that Min. Potaka and Min. Upston step in, launch a urgent review of MSD's application of the Government's Emergency Housing policy and immediately roll back their reforms until they have the publics confidence that greater harm is not occurring as a result of the policy this Government has put in place!

Alongside this the Government should begin mahi on developing Duty to Assist legislation to clarify MSD's responsibilities to prevent homelessness and support those experiencing it!

Our people deserve better! No one should have to sleep on our streets. No one should be denied shelter!

If anything, the Government's Emergency Housing reforms serve as a reminder that homelessness does not need to exist. It is the result of political decisions that prioritize profit of people. We can make different ones!

#HouseThePeople #Duty2Assist