KEY POINTS:
Here I was thinking that our right-wing city masters would be chuffed at the entrepreneurial skills of the beggar sitting in lower Queen St with pleading signs in both English and Chinese, but no.
Community services committee chairman Paul Goldsmith wants to shovel him and his homeless mates off the Golden Mile and out of sight.
He is "gravely concerned with the prevalence of rough sleepers in Auckland City" and says "we need to find a workable way to get people off the streets to improve the perception on safety within Auckland's public spaces".
He should have a word with Mayor Bob Harvey out west. He's driven the unwanted away from his fancy new Waitakere Central train station by bathing it in classical music, day and night.
My guess is Mr Goldsmith's been watching too much Beijing Olympics coverage, and become seduced by the ease with which the rulers of that world-class city sanitised its streets of their less-perfect citizens.
At least the councillor has the honesty to talk about improving "the perception of safety" and not safety itself. Because from all accounts the inner-city rough sleepers pose no threat to anyone but themselves.
"Addressing and reducing the level of homelessness in Auckland" is Councillor Goldsmith's aim. But his call for new laws "that allow the police to do the job - picking people up and moving them somewhere else", is just sweeping the problem under a carpet.
Where does he want the police to dump the homeless after the big round-up? In a holding cell? On the North Shore? In a work camp on a remote Gulf island?
If Mr Goldsmith had put his professional researcher hat on before he started scare-mongering, he'd have discovered that the last council had launched a three-year Homeless Action Plan which was recently renewed for another three.
He would also have discovered that under the aegis of the Committee for Auckland, a homeless taskforce involving central Government agencies, the Auckland District Health Board and non-government agencies such as the Auckland City Mission and Lifewise, is close to launching a grand plan of action. Funding will be sought at Government level this month.
The plan is based on the "million-dollar Murray" approach to helping the homeless adopted by more than 200 United States cities. It started with two Nevada policemen tracking chronic inebriates for six months and toting up the costs involved. Murray Barr, a homeless alcoholic from Reno, ran up a bill of US$100,000 at a single hospital.
For the 10 years he had been on the streets, Murray had run up a medical bill as large as anyone in Nevada. Then there were all the other costs. The time in police cells, ambulances and so on. And at the end of the day, he was still homeless.
In the US, it's been found cheaper to get the chronic homeless like Murray - most, like here, with mental health and/or drug and/or alcohol problems - into supported housing, where social workers can work as a team to ensure these people get the assistance, including help to maintain their tenancy, they need.
Committee for Auckland repeated the sums in Auckland and while figures are still being finalised, researcher Sarah Lang says that Auckland, too, has its million-dollar Murrays.
For four years now, the various agencies have combined to do an annual census of primary homeless people living within a 3km radius of Sky Tower. The most recent, on June 22, uncovered 91 Aucklanders living in deserted buildings, on the streets and in parks. This was a big leap on the previous year's 65.
The biggest groups were the 41-50 year olds (29), then 21-30s (21). Nearly half were Maori (43) and practically all were male (74). On the night of the census there were at least 267 boarding house vacancies.
Chances are, many of the core homeless will have been blacklisted from both these boarding houses and the downtown emergency overnight shelter. They will also have assorted case workers - mental health, probation - in tow.
The grand plan is get the agencies working together to jointly manage each client. Some are going to need a helping hand on a permanent basis. But the US experience is that this is not just the humane approach, but the cost-effective one as well. Even Mr Goldsmith should be able to buy that.
