Housing reduces Homelessness!
It appears that, despite some doubts, levels of homelessness can be reduced through the provision of housing.
Between 2024 and 2025 the number homelessness in the streets of Auckland doubled, according to those working in the social sector. People walking around the city centre will have noticed that numbers on the streets have reduced significantly over the Summer break.
There is a reason for that. The Ministry of Housing and Development (HUD) made available hundreds more units across the country for transitional housing and Housing First programmes - a significant proportion of them in Auckland.
Kāhui Tū Kaha, a community housing provider, moved 50 people living on the streets in Central Auckland into housing and support services. They have also been going into boarding houses (in a scheme funded by Auckland Council) to provide support for tenants in need and helped find Housing First spaces for them.
Housing First is a policy in which people with mental health, addiction or other issues are provided with a home and support services at the same time (rather than housing being predicated on being clean and in a good space - which is somewhat hard to achieve when one is living in a doorway, or couchsurfing, living in a car etc). Housing First is evolving in practice, alongside Rapid Rehousing, to be most effective within the cultural landscape of Aotearoa.
It seems also that the police have been proactive in bringing homeless people into the system where there are outstanding warrants for relatively low infractions (trespass) etc. This is somewhat unsettling from a social-justice perspective (are they the appropriate agency to do this?) However, if they are well trained to work with the vulnerable and there are strong guardrails (eg. that mental health workers will accompany police to mental health related call-outs) this may be helpful, as long as getting into the system means that there actually is housing and support provided.
City Missioner Helen Robinson identified three groups of people on the street. The homeless, the housed who liked to be on the street and the criminal preying on the vulnerable, and that all three needed a different institutional response. It seems that the homeless piece is being addressed. More housing means fewer people on the street and fewer subsequent gatherings of hangers on. Changes to urban design have reduced criminal activity in some spaces, as has a police response targeting lower level criminal activity. On the other hand there seems to be an escalation of violence in other parts of the city.
Moving on Orders are still on the cards, but Mark Mitchell is on the record assuring the public that there has to be somewhere for people to move onto (that is not the streets or parks of another part of the city). This means there needs to continue to be a sufficient stock of transitional housing, Housing First units, and permanent housing available that is decent, safe and affordable. And if there is this provision, it begs the question of whether Moving on Orders simply for being homeless are needed at all. Are they the nudge that people need to get back in the system? Or an over-reach of institutional power over human rights? I would be interested in what people with lived experience of homelessness say about it. There may be no simple answer.
What might be said is that they are not currently live, and the actions already taken (particularly providing housing) seem to have made a significant impact. What difference will moving on orders make? And will they be targeted at those actually causing trouble, or those who look untidy? Indications suggest the latter, despite the fact that on the whole the homeless are more sinned against than sinners.
In a cabinet briefing last year, the Post reported that “police, councils and social service agencies have advised that law enforcement responses to these behaviours are generally ineffective responses to homelessness, which is best addressed through collaborative, place-based approaches.”
You can see how that might be. If being homeless is a crime, then it would make it much harder for vulnerable people to be found and supported. For those in a position where things had gone wrong, or they may have made poor decisions, being picked up by the police may well be strenuously avoided which could make their situation even worse. And it diverts attention from actual crime and exploitation.
Many homeless people fly under the radar, living in cars, couch surfing (sometimes in exchange for sexual services), or getting caught up in criminal organisations. Shifting visible homeless to the underworld would not be a helpful step. Rather, the provision of more transitional and supported housing, and the regulation of boarding houses, to expand the number of beds out there in safe, decent accommodation would be welcome.
There are many who suggest that housing and homeless are not connected. “They have homes, they don’t want to live in them” say some. This might be the case for a small hardcore of longterm homelessness who resist getting back into the system (and the cycle of trying, hoping, waiting, failing to be supported may well be more brutal than living on the margins doing things your way). However, it seems that for many housing and support is wanted.