Out but not down on the city streets

Street life can be uncomfortable and dangerous, but it's the choice of some people. TONY WALL and photographer PETER MEECHAM lived among them for three days.

Ian Howard lives in a dark, violent, subterranean world where people feed off society's scraps, scavenging for food like rats. But he prefers to think of himself as a soaring eagle, a bird of prey with a keen eye for danger and strong survival instincts. He wears an eagle T-shirt and his arm and back are etched with tattoos of the bird.

"They are lovely creatures, they are fascinating. Their wings spread so wide ... they survive - they go for live bait and they're very strong," he says with an admiring look in his bright blue eyes.

Howard, 37, lives on the streets - but it has not always been that way. He has held down jobs, including one as groundsman and security guard for the Holy Trinity Church in Parnell, earned good money and lived indoors.

He could have been a success, with his leadership qualities and motor-mouth, but he prefers living rough and could well die anonymously under a bush somewhere.

Depending on the season, up to 250 people sleep rough in Auckland. As the Auckland City Mission was running its Winter Appeal, Howard invited the Weekend Herald into his world to show how homeless people live on the streets.

Last week we spent 72 hours with Howard in the inner-city, discovering a world where life is cheap and people cling to anything - drugs, drink, dreams - to keep themselves going.

Howard is always moving. He covers many kilometres with his pack glued to his wiry frame, shifting from park to graveyard to railway tunnel, looking for homeless friends to drink or smoke cannabis with.

He walks quickly and holds his head high - he is not proud of some of the things he has done, but neither is he ashamed of who he is.

His eyes dart about, scanning for cigarette butts, food scraps, discarded coins - on good weeks he can find up to $100, he reckons. Avoiding main streets, he sticks to a network of alleys and cross-country tracks.

Howard listens for sounds of danger, such as a siren or the police helicopter. He sometimes carries a police radio scanner - he has recently been caught with cannabis and could not cope with another fine.

On this Wednesday morning he has had breakfast at the City Mission in Hobson St, where he works as a volunteer, and is now heading up to Albert Park.

Wearing trackpants under his black, City Mission-issue Levis, a ragged singlet under his American eagle T-shirt, a black beanie, a blue and black checked Swanndri and second-hand Nike trainers, he is relatively tidy, despite his scruffy beard and leathery face, and is not obviously homeless.

Howard has lived on the streets on and off since he was 19.

A hereditary condition meant he was born without a right ear, so plastic surgeons fashioned a new one from skin cut from his stomach. He cannot hear out of it, but at least it helped ease the taunts of children when he was young.

He was raised in Tauranga by his father Derek after his mother left when he was little. Derek Howard, a milk factory worker, struggled to feed his four children. "We didn't have Christmas presents or anything like that," Ian says.

The Howards lived in a poor area and Ian fell into petty crime, breaking into cars and stealing from shops.

In special classes at primary school and Otumoetai College because of his learning difficulties, he dropped out in the fifth form and got a job in an egg factory. A couple of years later he moved to Wellington to try his luck, but with no money he ended up on the streets.

Over the next couple of years he lived on the streets of Christchurch (he got piles and pneumonia from sleeping on bare concrete), Dunedin and Invercargill before returning to the North Island.

In 1987 he spent two weeks on remand in Waikeria Prison - his only jail stint - while awaiting sentencing for cheque fraud.

He eventually drifted to Auckland, where he worked for a shop-fitting company and a hoist-hire firm before getting a job at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell, for $220 a week plus free board and meals, and later at the Anglican Retreat Centre in Long Bay.

He speaks glowingly of the Anglican Church, which paid $2000 for a plate to replace five of his rotting front teeth. But about 18 months ago, Howard decided he was going nowhere in his job and he was better off back on the streets, living on dole payments of $120 a week.

"I got a negative feeling living in four walls. I'm better off sleeping outside, not paying rent and not being told what to do - you learn a lot more living out.

"There are a million people in Auckland - I'm just one in the spider's web."

I N Albert Park, Howard meets his closest friends - his "family". There is Wayne Campbell, a 55-year-old father of seven by four different women, and a thirty-something Iranian they call Orakei because they cannot pronounce his real name.

These people are different from many of the homeless - they do not have serious psychiatric disorders or alcohol and drug dependencies. They live on the fringes of society, occasionally getting jobs and moving from houses to the street as regularly as some people change flats.

The friends chain-smoke roll-your-owns and smoke "dak" together most days. Ian says he needs cannabis to keep him calm. "It feels like your problems are away from you. Dope's cheaper than booze and lasts longer."

He spends about $60 a week on three "tinnies" - cannabis bud and leaf wrapped in foil. Police recently caught him with two tinnies and a pipe, for which he was fined $380. It's taken out of his dole at $40 a week.

Wayne Campbell, from Christchurch, has been on the streets of Auckland for about four years. He lives in a crawl space under a university villa on the fringe of Albert Park, considered an excellent pad because it is dry and private and only a handful of streeties know about it.

He keeps a padlock on the wooden gate leading to his pad. He has to be out by about 7.30 am before the students arrive, and then stays away for the rest of the day in case they spot him creeping home.

Campbell is on the dole but is seeking work. On Saturdays he does periodic detention for stealing a car and driving it drunk.

While he would like to get back indoors, he can't afford it - about $30 a week of his dole money goes on child support and fines, and the rest barely covers food.

Living in cheap accommodation is not an option, he says. "Who wants to stay in a night shelter with all the streeties? You go for a shower and all your stuff goes missing - I can't live like that."

Campbell sticks to himself because he finds the streets dangerous. "There's a lot of jealousy towards those who get working and get under a roof. You have to watch that and be very careful, it's all competitive - it's hard to make friends."

Orakei, who has a huge mane of curly black hair that he keeps in place with a leather belt, has lived in New Zealand for 10 years. His shoes have been stolen so he is barefoot. He does not say much - he tells stories of his home country, but they make little sense.

Ian Howard leaves Albert Park and moves downhill towards Parnell, where he looks for Lone Wolf, whose den is a graffiti-covered tunnel near the railway station.

Like an aboriginal tracker, Howard looks for signs of life - perhaps a recently discarded cigarette butt or tell-tale cardboard, the homeless man's groundsheet. But Lone Wolf is nowhere to be seen.

Mid-afternoon he decides it is time to start drinking, so he buys an 18-pack of Lion Red stubbies, which he shares with Campbell in Emily Pl.

Time ticks slowly by as the rest of the city goes about its business. Boredom is the constant companion of the homeless. The friends occasionally urinate in bushes as office workers hurry by, and a couple of rats watch cautiously from some undergrowth.

During this down-time, Howard talks about his hopes for the future. "I don't care about a job or a house, I want to live with a woman - it doesn't matter what culture, as long as she's happy. We're here on this planet to love each other and breed."

A S the sun goes down, Howard visits another friend, Willy, a 43-year-old from Kaitaia who lives in a stolen car, which he moves each day to avoid police checks.

Willy caught a bus to Auckland from Northland two years ago and has lived rough in the city ever since. He spends most of his time in the Auckland Public Library, researching his ancestry so he can make a land claim against the Government.

"It could be worth the whole of New Zealand or even extend further," he says. He has big plans if his claim comes through.

"I'll free all the innocent jailbirds, the unemployed will get paid twice a week and I'll get them all places with electrical appliances. Then I'll celebrate [Maori] independence day."

He clings to the black folder that contains his research notes as if it was a security blanket - when he is down and feels he can't go on, the thought of winning his claim gives him hope, he says.

Howard leaves Willy and heads up to the university to watch television in the recreation centre. He is basically illiterate, but he spends more time on university property than some students.

After catching up with the 6 pm news, he chats with another homeless man, Matt, perhaps the best-educated of Howard's many street contacts. The 39-year-old is a former anthropology student who has lived on the street on and off since 1987.

Matt believes increased homelessness in Western countries is a part of social evolution. He says it's a tough life.

"A lot of the time you're just walking a tightrope trying to live on $120 a week. All you want is a little bit of security, and if that means sitting around in a park all day so you have a bit of money to buy a meal at night, then so be it."

Matt says he is tired of fighting Work and Income NZ (Winz) over benefit payments and it's ridiculously tough to get a sickness benefit when he falls ill.

"The hardest part [of being homeless] is that you're at odds with the rest of society, there's a psychological battle with people thinking you're a bum ... you run into conflicts, so that's why you tend to go off on your own tangent."

It's time to find dinner - Howard heads towards the railway station and comes out at the back of the shops on Quay St. This is one of his favourite places to find food.

Tonight he chooses KFC, and heads for the dumpster at the back of the restaurant. He finds plastic bags containing cast-off chicken, picks three pieces, and eats the food metres from where a homeless man died of a methylated spirits overdose just a few weeks before.

The chicken's batter is doughy and the meat tastes stale, but Howard devours the lot and sucks the bones clean. This is the only meal he has had since breakfast.

After eating, Howard heads back towards his pad, the location of which remains a secret from even his closest street friends. He's afraid that if too many people hang around, he will be moved on.

The pad is at the bottom of a gully under the eaves of an old wooden house, just 5m or so from a motorway offramp. Howard sleeps on a foam pad and has a sleeping bag and blankets to keep warm. He uses sheets of wood to create an enclosure. Traffic roars by all night and the trucks are so loud it feels as if they will drive right over the top of him.

He has one nocturnal friend - a possum that lives in a nearby tree.

On Thursday morning he rises at dawn and heads to the university music block for his daily shower. The shower is strong and hot. He says it is important to stay clean and warm to ward off illness - every homeless person's Achilles heel.

On laundry day he sneaks into an apartment building in Parnell to use its coin-operated machines, or simply soaps up his clothes in the shower, then sits in the sun to dry out.

From the university he moves to a square next to the Art Gallery, where a milkman gives him some free milk and grated cheese for later. He buys three packets of peanut slabs to give him energy for the day ahead.

Then he heads to Victoria Park to find another acquaintance, Jimmy Ngamanu, an alcoholic who lives in the cricket pavilion. In the changing rooms he finds a wet towel - "Jimmy must be close by."

Across the other side of the park Howard finds Jimmy, 60, who has been sipping wine from a sports drink container and is blind drunk. It is only 11 am.

Jimmy sits with a friend, Te Pihi Kareko, 63, from the Bay of Islands, another man on the streets by choice. A fisherman for more than 40 years, Kareko owns a house in Northland but comes to Auckland every six months to live on the streets. "It's living free and in among the people - living as you should live," he says. "It's a bit hard on the old shoulders, but so what?"

Talk soon turns to politics. Kareko likes the Labour Government, and is glad it got rid of former Winz boss Christine Rankin, because of the chartered flights debacle.

Jimmy won't have a bar of it. "She was all right bro, I loved that girl."

These two are like the street version of Hudson and Halls. Kareko mentions how they met back in Rangipo prison in 1962. "That's kaka," spits Jimmy. Kareko fires back,"You're kaka."

As Jimmy falls asleep, Kareko warns of the dangers of the street, in particular Pigeon Park on the corner of Symonds St and Karangahape Rd. A favourite haunt of homeless alcoholics, he says some have gang connections.

"Don't go to Pigeon Park, it's a wild place to be. Narks get the knife there."

But Howard is heading in that direction. He catches the Link bus through Ponsonby and walks up to K Rd, an area that brings back unpleasant memories. Several years ago he walked these side streets as a prostitute during a particularly desperate time, selling his body to men old enough to be his father.

He arrives at the Jewish cemetery next to Pigeon Park and stumbles across a film crew making an advertisement. Dry ice creates a smoky atmosphere and a man with a hockey mask and axe is cavorting like a madman.

Howard is not impressed. He offers his services as a "more realistic" axeman, and advises that more tomato sauce should be put on the blade. "Cut," yells the director, as the crew directs deathly stares in his direction.

Howard skirts around Pigeon Park. It is only lunchtime but the park is already full of drunks, some of whom scream obscenities.

He heads to the nearby Naval and Family pub, where he occasionally drinks if he can find the money. He spends $28 a week on Lotto tickets and now and again wins enough in minor prizemoney to keep him in drink.

Moving on to another pub, he eventually makes his way back to Wayne Campbell's pad. The pair drink until 3 am. During the night they are visited by an assortment of gluesniffers, including one who apparently got Aids from an infected needle.

O N Friday morning it's raining. After four hours' sleep, Howard has his daily shower and then heads to the City Mission for a food parcel and some wet-weather gear.

Today is cook-up day. Walking through the Auckland Domain with Campbell, they hear someone screaming obscenities - it's Lone Wolf. A huge, hooded Samoan, he paces from side to side in the bushes, keeping his distance, like an animal in a zoo.

Lone Wolf will not come near, so Howard goes to him. He head-butts the big man to calm him down, then sends him on his way.

He passes the spot where homeless woman Betty Marusich was bashed to death in 1995. He saw her shortly before her death and was questioned several times by police. "I'd like to get my hands on the reward money."

During the afternoon, Howard and Campbell smoke tobacco and cannabis as they move through the Domain and on to Outhwaite Park in Grafton, which has a free gas barbecue.

Campbell does the cooking while Howard looks for plastic containers in rubbish bins to use as plates. Campbell cuts up thick chunks of potato and fries them in margarine with some carrot and sausage. In a separate pot he concocts a mixture that includes corned beef, onion and two sachets of Continental pasta.

After two hours of cooking the mixture on the barbecue over a low heat, Campbell pours it on to the fry-up, creating a "pie". It is rather stodgy, but tasty.

The rest of Friday is quiet. Howard has only $5 left until next week, so he will have to find food in rubbish bins. Once, when he was desperate for food, he slaughtered a sheep in One Tree Hill domain.

He sits in Albert Park during the evening watching the world go by, then returns to his pad for an early night. It is bitterly cold - not a good night for sleeping under the stars. In winter, some homeless people deliberately commit crimes so they can get sent to a warm prison, he says.

Next morning he does his rounds of the university, looking for cigarette butts and drinking the dregs out of discarded beer and liquor bottles.

He does this without an ounce of shame. "This is survival," he says. He sees a 10c piece and leaps on it. "I'd like to stand up in the Beehive and tell them what it's like for the street people. I bet they would all look away."

While Howard lives on the streets by choice, he is still considering whether he is happy. His mood has stayed constant for the past three days and he has laughed a lot.

Where does he see himself in five years? "I really don't know."

He knows he could die on the streets. "But you don't know what's around the corner unless you go around it. I could get hit by a car. I could die. If people start smelling something bad they might think, 'Oh well, someone's died' - a possum might have a feed on me."