It’s estimated around 43,500 people were homeless or experiencing ‘severe housing deprivation’ at the 2023 Census. Photo / 123 rf
Advocates warn homelessness could happen to anyone — and New Zealand’s system to deal with it isn’t up to scratch.
It’s estimated about 43,500 people — about 0.9% of the population — were homeless or experiencing ‘severe housing deprivation’ at the last Census in March 2023.
University of Otago research professor, and co-leader of He Kāinga Oranga – Housing and Health Research Programme, Nevil Pierse told The Front Page it seems obvious, but the solution to our homelessness crisis is getting people into homes.
“From people who’ve been sleeping rough with mental health and other problems, you see that over 12 months, if you can get people permanently housed and supported, a dramatic improvement in mental health with their need for services going down about 60 to 80%,” he said.
According to the Salvation Army State of the Nation 2025 report, emergency housing numbers have plummeted from 4000 in September 2023 to 1400 in September 2024, and below 500 by December 2024.
Last month, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka celebrated the Government achieving its target to reduce the number of households in emergency housing motels by 75%, five years ahead of schedule.
“Large-scale use of emergency housing was one of the biggest public policy failures in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. Under the previous Government, many thousands of New Zealanders were dumped in motel accommodation for months or even years, particularly in places like Hamilton,” he said.
The Salvation Army cites reduction targets and tightened criteria for access as likely ”a key contributor to the rising street homelessness reported”.
“There are a lot of NGOs, including the Salvation Army, who are seeing a lot more people coming to them.
“Rather than reducing the wait list by reducing the number of people in emergency housing by getting people into permanent housing, we’ve just made it much harder to get the emergency housing benefits,” Pierse said.
Of those who are leaving emergency housing, Potaka said the Government knows about 80% have moved to social, transitional, or private housing with some kind of Government support.
Meanwhile, Pierse said to be eligible for this support, you now have to be in utter crisis.
“So the emergency housing waitlist is separated into categories... A, B, C, D. Within that, you’re given a grade, so A21 down to A1. A21 is the very highest need — no income, sleeping on the streets, high history of mental health needs, several children dependants, and in utter crisis of life and death.
“We’ve gone from housing A21 to about A13 and now we’re only housing A21 through to A17. So, of those people we’d like to be supporting on the wait list from A21 down to D1, we’re only housing that really tiny fraction in real crisis,” he said.
Pierse pointed to there being a misconception among the general public about homelessness, and who required help.
“When we house people, they do less drugs, they spend less time on the street, they get jobs.
“When we looked at a cohort of people who were sleeping rough on the street and were housed by the People’s Project, most of those had been paying taxes in the years before they were homeless, and after they were housed about five years later, they were paying substantially more tax.
“All of us are only one big mental health crisis away from being homeless... And we make the system really hard to navigate.
“It’s unfair to those people and those individuals who are homeless to blame them when the system is so badly set up and it doesn’t do what it should be trying to do,” he said.
This week, HomeGround in Auckland, one of the many grassroots initiatives trying to tackle this crisis, turns three.
NZ Herald senior writer Simon Wilson has spoken with some of the building’s residents to mark the anniversary of the opening of Auckland City Mission’s ‘mothership’.
He told The Front Page it offers a principle in dealing with the homeless called ‘Housing First’.
“Housing First says we give people somewhere that is safe, warm, and dry then with that housing need taken care of first, we can wrap the services they need around them to rebuild their lives.
“It’s an 11-story building with 80 apartments that people live in. They are their homes. It also has two floors for detox, a big dining room, an enormous medical centre, a pharmacy, a whole lot of activities rooms, a rooftop garden and it’s in the middle of Auckland,” he said.
The building houses an eclectic mix of personalities — a carefully curated balance of young and old, men and women, and chronic, severe, or mild needs.
Wilson said for some it’d be a fleeting visit, for others, it’ll be their last home.
He detailed meeting an 82-year-old man who has a PhD, contributed to social research in New Zealand, and is a self-described “chronic alcoholic”.
“A lovely man. Very smart, very dry wit. When you’re talking to him, he throws jokes at you just to see if you’d get them, that kind of thing,” Wilson said.
He also met up with a couple of women, close friends who’d known each other for 30 years.
“Both had a history of being physically abused by their long-term partners and a history of drugs. They both left home when they were teenagers and got seriously into the drug culture and didn’t quite manage to get themselves out until decades later.
“They were tough women who were now at peace. One had said ‘I’d be dead if it wasn’t for this place,' and I believed them,” Wilson said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about how we could end homelessness in New Zealand.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.