"It doesn't have to be this way!" Whānau in crisis as NZ fails to uphold housing rights
Homelessness is a political choice, our children don't have to sleep on our streets, we can do something about this...
A recent OECD report highlighted New Zealand as having one of the highest rates of homelessness in the developed world, with more than 2 per cent of us recorded as experiencing homelessness.
It is important to note that it isn't necessarily apples with apples, as New Zealand has a broader definition of homelessness than some of the other countries surveyed.
However, that doesn’t take away from the extreme horror and trauma of those figures. The Ministry of Housing and Urban development currently estimates that over 102,000 of our whānau, rangatahi and tamariki are experiencing homelessness.
Those numbers represent real people, real trauma, real harm that is happening right now.
It should horrify us, outrage us, force us to our feet and out onto the streets.
In New Zealand we define homelessness as either sleeping rough, living in unstable, overcrowded and unlivable housing, couch surfing, sleeping in cars, in emergency motels, or generally not having a stable or solid place to live.
This definition is important, because it captures wide ranging experiences of homelessness that people go through.
When reflecting on this report it's important we recognize a couple of things.
First, homelessness is not something we have to accept in this country. In fact, it is totally unacceptable, and we can and must do something about.
Second, we get nowhere by making this a Blue or Red issue. The truth is successive Governments have failed to adequately care for and prioritize the welfare of our people, leading to homelessness becoming a reality in Aotearoa.
Thirdly, the choices we make right now will either grow inequality and increase homelessness, or they will begin to address the issue and improve things for our whānau and communities.
At times, in this country, we look at reports like this, feel horrified, and yet fail to connect how the political choices we are participating in are ensuring poverty, homelessness and inequality are a reality for people.
For example, despite being aware that rangatahi are disproportionately impacted by homelessness in NZ, successive Governments have chosen not to prioritize a strategy to prevent and end youth homelessness leaving us in the impossible situation where we have children sleeping rough on our streets and teenagers being shoved into motels alone where they are often unsafe and experience mental, physical, and emotional harm.
We know that many of our elders sleeping rough, first experienced homelessness when they were kids, if we're serious about ending homelessness in Aotearoa, we need to get a lot more serious about ending youth and child homelessness.
Another, example is the decision to weaken renter’s rights by bringing back no cause evictions. A decision critiqued by community leaders and advocates serving our whānau experiencing homelessness as a move that will only increase the risk of homelessness in our communities.
Currently, this Government is making a range of choices that fail to respond to homelessness and in fact risk making the situation worse. Decisions to get tougher on evicting whānau in Kāinga Ora housing, to provide less accountability to property managers, to increase sanctions on people receiving financial support from MSD, and to build boot camps rather than investing in housing and support services for traumatized and mentally unwell young people who are experiencing housing insecurity. These things are connected.
We know that these decisions we have made and are making increase the risk of homelessness for people, and yet time and time again our Government's fail to treat homelessness like the crisis it is.
Homelessness isn't inevitable. We can end homelessness in this country, we can ensure that everyone has a safe place to live, good food to eat, a strong community around them, and the support, care and love they require in order to thrive.
It's all about choices. The ones we have made, the ones we are making, and those we will make in the future.
None of this is inevitable. It doesn't have to be this way, and we get to decide if it continues.
#LoveIsTheWay #EndYouthHomelessness #EndHomelessness
A.J. Hendry is a Laidlaw College graduate, and a Youth Development Worker and rangatahi advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads Kick Back, a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.