Senior social worker Grant Wilson spends his efforts helping New Zealand's homeless. Giving them a helping hand with blankets, food and clothes.
Social issues reporter Simon Collins and photographer Jason Oxenham continue their coverage of the growing numbers of homeless people in the Super City.
As more people sleep rough in the suburbs, one advocate is suggesting building lockers for their belongings.
Waitemata Community Law Centre legal worker Tom Harris wants to raise money from the public for lockers, so homeless people can store their possessions for the day instead of carrying them on their backs.
"I'm looking at peer funding for this," he said. "You put it out in the community and people will chip in.
"We're hoping to speak to local social services and put the lockers near them. It's also a device to keep an eye on the homeless and see how they're coping."
Grant Wilson of the Waipareira Trust. Photo / Jason Oxenham
West Auckland's Te Whanau o Waipareira Trust has appointed a fulltime social worker, Grant Wilson, to work with people who sleep regularly in the doorways and verandas of the trust's offices. He is now working with 28 rough sleepers in the area.
Auckland City Mission's homeless outreach team is also getting more callouts to rough sleepers from Whangaparaoa to Pukekohe. The team found 12 sleeping rough in a disused caravan park at Henderson's Tui Glen Reserve on Monday.
And the Salvation Army, which provides free showers and washing machines at its Henderson branch, is completing two surveys of homelessness in the west and across Auckland because it is seeing so many rough sleepers.
"A few years ago homelessness of that kind in the suburbs wouldn't have been known," said its social policy director, Major Campbell Roberts.
"My feeling is that it's a relatively recent phenomenon. In the last 18 months to two years there's been a decided shift in what's going on. You have the exit of some of the boarding house-type activities, and increasingly some of the places that these people would have used have been taken up now with families."
West Auckland's streets are home to Carlos Murphy (left), Bonz and Evan Frost. Photos / Jason Oxenham
Eight homeless people who spoke to the Herald in Henderson yesterday said the problem was not new, but was intensified by rising housing costs.
Bonz, a 59-year-old grandfather who has lived on the streets on a benefit for mental health issues since he was 34, said: "I get $180 a week. You need $400 or $500 to get into a clean place.
"It's the mental health patients that you have to be very careful with," he said. "You can't just put them into a house with a bunch of straighties. You need to put them in a place where they can be helped."
A couple aged 53 and 51, who have lived on the streets on and off for eight years, said they also could not cope with flatmates at their age and could not afford their own flat.
"When he was paying rent he was getting $205 a week and paying $200," the woman said.
Carlos, a 51-year-old grandfather, who has lived on the streets since a 20-year relationship ended in 2001, tried renting but was left with only $40-$50 a week out of a benefit of $160.
Jay Harris, 29, left home at 16 when he became old enough to fight back against his mother's boyfriend, who had been abusing her for years.
"I've been back out here [on the streets] since before last Christmas and not because I want to be out here, but I feel like I don't fit in. I need my own house but that costs too much," he said.
Billy, 28, and another man, 26, both ran away to the streets from foster homes.
Mr Wilson said he would like the council to fund a shelter in the west.
The council yesterday budgeted $110,000 a year for the next three years to support homeless people and $250,000 a year for two years for start-up costs for new emergency housing.
