Death on the street

Home for Rangi Carroll was the cold, grey concrete of Auckland’s CBD. For five years his bed was a rumpled sleeping bag, his roof the open sky, his walls the inner-city facades and his family and friends were his fellow streeties. But the 57-year-old refused to let how he lived on the city streets shape the way people saw him. “My life is far from destitute ... I’ve become known as someone who achieved anyway,” he told a crowded room at a 2015 TED Talk in Hamilton.

Carroll’s name could be found in almost all of the Auckland City Mission’s activity books; a constant presence at art class, drama club, movie club, client committee and council meetings.

But one thing he seemed to struggle with was getting a job.

Carroll spent five years living on the city streets before he got into a house. But less than a year later he was dead, at just 57. 

His life had ended, like so many streeties, more than 20 years earlier than the average life expectancy of New Zealanders. 

If death had come to Carroll mere months earlier, it would have happened on the streets. He would have become another homeless death to shock the headlines for some 24 hours before the spotlight moves on.

Instead his death went largely unnoticed by all, except those who knew him best. It became part of the largely invisible toll that homelessness takes on those who’ve lived it, even long after they’ve left the streets. 

Those who knew Carroll have little doubt his time spent sleeping rough contributed to him dying years before his time.

Carroll’s life began on February 1, 1960. His teenage years were spent in Kainga, on the outskirts of the small Canterbury town of Kaiapoi.

A school friend describes him as a “bit of a loner” with a “phenomenal wit” who never did like to follow the status quo and had a  “pretty dim view of authority and protocol”. 

Mario Grinwis, 57, went to Kaiapoi High School with Carroll, in the 1970s. Back then his friend was known as Shawn.

“He was so dry and cynical that where the teacher thought he was being respectful and compliant, he was actually in complete disagreement.” 

Despite his tough exterior, Grinwis said, Carroll was a loyal friend.

Grinwis knew little about Carroll’s home life and they lost touch after high-school. Some years later they rekindled their friendship, online at least, when his old mate launched a search for him on social media a couple of years ago. 

In all their chat, Grinwis says his mate never once mentioned being homeless. 

“I was quite shocked. I mean, I don’t know if I would have been in a position at all to help, but I would have liked to have known if he needed some assistance.”

The friends lost contact after they left high school in the 1970s. 

Carroll left without a qualification in the late 1970s but what he did over the subsequent decades was not something the private man shared – even with his fellow streeties.

Friends say he talked little of the past.

Carroll did not pursue further education for almost 30 years, until he began his tertiary studies at the Waikato Institute of Technology in Hamilton almost 30 years later.

He completed various certificate programmes and eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Media Arts in Journalism and in 2009 was given an award as one of the institute’s top adult students. 

After graduation he was meant to start work on a doctoral student’s project, but when the funding fell through Carroll headed for the opportunities he thought Auckland could offer him.

He found the big lights of the city streets – but the opportunities he hoped for weren’t to be found. 

Rob, 40, became a good friend of Carroll’s after meeting him in an art class in 2014 or 2015 when both were living on the streets. 

He said the reasons why they were homeless were not something they talked about. 

“We never really got into that, we never discussed why we were homeless. ‘You’re homeless, I’m homeless, aroha, let’s go for a feed’.”

Rob said Carroll was a great intellect who loved a good debate and would always take a stand for what he believed in. 

“Yes he was homeless, but he was an intellect that loves talking to anyone and everyone. 

“He would hold the fort, stand up and really tell people what homelessness is about, he’s not afraid.”

It was around 2011 when Carroll became one of the more than 50 human bundles seen huddled against a shop wall, or on a quiet alleyway, within a 3km radius of the Auckland Sky Tower. 

His favourite place away from the cold was the Auckland City Library. It was there Carroll could read in peace, use the computers and watch a good movie. Carroll also helped set up a regular free-movie session at the central library for his fellow streeties.

At lunchtime he was often seen at Merge Cafe on K Rd, or at the Urban Vineyard church and at other times could be seen at the Auckland City Mission on Hobson St.Carroll was also a regular at the city council meetings – a quiet, but unfearing voice pushing for change for the growing number of streeties.

Auckland councillor Cathy Casey says his words were always valued. “It’s a huge deal to have street people in front of the council committee. He was a very brave man. He had a lot more to give. “He presented as a grumpy old man. You would walk past him on the street, that’s what you would see.“But he wasn’t [like] that at all.”

She says all it took was getting Carroll to open up with a word of greeting and his eyes would light up and “we’d be off”. “It was really nice to walk into a room and know he was there, he would introduce me to other people.”

Casey says meeting Carroll brought home how homelessness could so easily impact any one of us. “It just takes a tragic life event, that’s Rangi [losing a chance at a job]. “You and me we are only one step removed from homelessness ... that’s what you have to bear in mind every time you see a homeless person.”

Carroll’s luck began to turn and by mid 2016, with the assistance of social agencies, Lifewise and the Auckland City Mission, he was able to get off the streets. 

Getting a shower was no longer a hunting expedition and a hot drink was only a button push away. 

Video footage he uploaded to Facebook shows the day he gets his own whare. It’s nothing flash, a single-bedroom place inside the Kiwi on Queen, near the K Rd end of the city. 

It has a bed, a table, a washing machine and a shower. It also has space for a TV – one of the first things Carroll was recorded as saying he was going to buy. 

“The first priority is I’ve got to get a TV for the weekends. I’m going to bring that back and I’m going to plug that in and get it going,” he is heard telling the person behind the camera.

It was the simple pleasures in life he wanted. 

“I’m going to get a jug and make me a hot coffee. 
“I’m going to have a long shower, I’m going to turn it on. I’m going to have a very lazy weekend and I’m not going to leave the building.” 

Carroll was looking forward to having a home to make his own, a bed to lay in at night and the space to write again. 

He became a peer support worker with Lifewise and planned to pay it forward by helping other streeties into a home. Cathy Casey says he was a mentor and role model showing

“I’ve done it, so can you”. 
“He got into a home, but his heart was still with the street community.” 

At the funeral there were about 30 people who gathered inside the Baptist Tabernacle – the church next to the apartment block where Carroll took his last breath, just days before.

The Auckland City Mission organised the funeral – something it does when family cannot be located or are unable to be involved. Lyon says the only family he knew of was a relative living in the South Island who was unable to make the journey up to Auckland.

“She was a bit shocked [when she heard of his death]. She remembered him as an amazing, kind and loving soul who was misunderstood by his family a little bit. She asked me to put a flower on his coffin for her.”

It joined the cluster of other flowers surrounding Carroll’s casket, which sat centre stage inside the cavernous space of the tabernacle. People walked up one by one, softly laying a kiss on his cheek as he lay unmoving in the open casket.

A photo of Carroll, looking out to the camera, was placed near his open coffin. The Auckland Street Choir filled the rafters with song.

During the service people shared their memories of the man with a dry sense of humour, who spoke his mind, was a “bit of a rascal back in the day” and was a good friend many could count on.

As the service drew to a close the lid was put on the open casket, shielding Carroll’s still face from view – the silence was pierced by the sound of a traditional karanga which continued as the coffin was carried outside.

“It was searing, it really kind of punctured your soul ... people were throwing flowers in the back of the hearse, there were lots of tears, it was amazing,” Lyon says.

Just Funerals director Steven Davey took care of the practicalities of Carroll’s funeral; taking his body from the mortuary to the funeral home, doing the embalming and putting him into the coffin, overseeing the service, and eventually the cremation.

He is one of those the Auckland City Mission calls on to organise a funeral – in the event the biological family wants it, or if there is no biological family. Davey estimates he has done eight for the mission in the last two years and says every funeral is an honour.

“We really do think it’s an honour we can do it,” he says. “Basically the mission is a big family, they take care of their own and we take care of the funeral.” It’s not an easy job – nor is it cheap.

According to the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand the price of a funeral can range from $4000 to $15,000. The maximum grant for someone doing one for a person who has died with no next of kin is $2030.91.

But Davey says even if he got nothing financial in return – it is the right thing to do – a way of giving back to the community.  He says every person has a story to tell, which is a privilege he gets to experience each day as an undertaker.

Carroll’s funeral is one that stands out in Davey’s mind.

“A video-clip played at his funeral said, ‘Don’t define me’,” Davey says.
“He said, ‘Don’t define me because of my homelessness’.

“Everybody celebrated what he did and what he stood for, but from my personal view, he was someone that was far too young.”

While the streeties were afforded the privilege of farewelling Carroll, the chance to do so is not something they take for granted. Having a funeral for a loved one and being a part of it is not a given for the street family.

A former homeless woman and elder in the street community, Rose Greaves, gets choked up as she talks about the sense of helplessness they feel when this happens.

“In our minds we are that person’s family, we are the ones that live day-to-day with that person,” she says. “But in general terms we are not and we don’t have any right, really. It means so much [to be included] because we get to say goodbye ... we spend so much time with them and suddenly they are not there anymore.

“So it’s really frustrating not knowing – frustrating and worrying about whether they are sitting on a slab at the morgue. Sometimes there is a lot of anger.”