KEY POINTS:
A fifth to a third of Auckland's homeless look set to enjoy one of the best addresses in the city.
The Auckland City Mission has unveiled an audacious plan to house 80 of the estimated 250 to 400 inner-city homeless in a 170-unit apartment development surrounding a new square next to the historic church of St Matthew-in-the-City.
Parnell architects Nicholas Stevens and Gary Lawson and collaborator Rewi Thompson have beaten more than 40 others in a competition to design a "concept" for the 4300sq m site between Hobson and Federal Sts, proposing four adjoining buildings of up to 12 storeys each with sloping roof patterns to complement the church.
The only catch is the price - $70 million. The plan includes five floors of underground parking, but City Missioner Diane Robertson said that would cover only a third of the cost.
The rest will have to come from non-profit organisations which may include the three bodies which paid for the design competition - Housing New Zealand, the ASB Community Trust and the Auckland City Council.
Housing NZ chairman Pat Snedden said a growing number of single people were seeking state housing and the corporation expected the City Mission plan would meet some of that demand. "Housing NZ will definitely be involved in some way."
The plan includes:
* Eighty one-person studio flats on Hobson St for the homeless.
* Fifty flats on Federal St for single parents attending tertiary education in the city, with their children.
* Twenty one-bedroom flats facing a central square for Housing NZ.
* Twenty new flats for clients of a "detox" facility for drug and alcohol addicts, which will stay in two old houses in Federal St.
* A community hall on the site of an existing carpark building in Federal St, for use by the church and for wedding receptions and other events.
* A circular daycare centre for 50 children with a rooftop play area above the hall.
* A two-storey building on Hobson St housing the church office and a cafe.
* A five-level underground carpark for 500 cars using a mechanised car-stacking system.
The City Mission itself will be housed in the bottom two floors of the apartment buildings, with a medical centre and showers and lockers for those who remain on the streets.
Ms Robertson said tenants would have to pay rent, and those using the daycare centre would pay commercial rates with only the standard Government subsidies.
But they would have the full services of the City Mission and the medical centre on hand.
"We are talking about transforming their lives," she said. "A lot of people who want to donate actually want to see that it has social outcomes, that we are not pouring money constantly into providing social services. This is about long-term change.
"We are talking about making a huge impact on homelessness - almost solving a huge amount of the homelessness in Auckland."
She said tenants would probably be expected to move on as soon as their incomes reached a certain level or, in the case of the sole-parent students, when they finished their studies.
"We hope, in the way we work with homeless people, that they will want to move out of studios and have relationships and move on because they will have more connections."
