Tauranga homeless bill $2.4m
City stemming homlessness in spite of significant cost of housing in motels
Tauranga is “stemming the flood of homelessness” according to a worker on the coalface, despite the city’s homelessness costing taxpayers $2.4 million for the last three months of 2020.
Newly released quarterly Government figures show emergency housing and special needs grants cost $9.1m in the Bay of Plenty from September to December last year.
Emergency housing grants fund people with no other housing options to go into places such as motels while special needs grants are for things such as essential one-off spends.
The area costing the most was in Rotorua, where emergency housing and special needs grants cost $5.6m for the three months.
Tauranga’s Te Tuinga Whanau Support Services Trust executive director Tommy Wilson said the figure locally was high but he was pleased it had dropped slightly from the previous month, costing $2.5m for July to September.
He said Tauranga had dropped despite its population swell yet Rotorua had leapt by nearly $1m.
He was critical of Rotorua’s emergency housing structure and the Government-funded wraparound services, saying the way it was being done in Tauranga was a good model. “We put our people back in the community and they don’t come back . . . We had 2600 families move to Tauranga . . . everyone is moving to Tauranga as it’s the place to be so you would think these figures would be for Tauranga, not Rotorua. The question has to be asked: why?”
Wilson said he believed Tauranga had “stemmed the flood of homelessness” by fixing the root of the problem.
“I think they [Rotorua] aren’t fixing the people up and they are coming around again.”
He said his trust operated by becoming the wha¯ nau of the person and “adopting” them to work alongside them.
“You can’t just take the funding, take them in and if it doesn’t work put them out on the street again and then take more funding for someone else. We focus on fixing them up so they don’t come back.”
Ministry of Social Development Bay of Plenty regional commissioner Mike Bryant said its role was to meet the emergency housing need to ensure people weren’t homeless.
“The ongoing rise in emergency housing special needs grants in Rotorua is a symptom of an ongoing shortage of affordable housing. The Covid period has also contributed to the increasing demand for emergency housing.
“We have an important role to play in ensuring those in need have somewhere to stay and they are not sleeping in their cars or outside.”
Bryant said there was a major programme of work under way aimed at increasing the supply of public housing and improving housing affordability and supply.
He said Te Tu¯a¯papa Kura Ka¯inga (the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development) and Ka¯inga Ora were working to increase the supply of affordable and public housing.
That included planning, and with Ka¯inga Ora, delivering more public housing, transitional housing, and services to tackle homelessness.
In response to Wilson’s comments, Bryant said the ministry congratulated Te Tuinga Whanau for the work
ATauranga judge told a man, who lunged at a police officer’s face with a bloody hand saying “have some hep C”, his threat was “callous and quite cruel”.
Judge Philip Connell made the comment to Peter Malcolm Black, 56, who appeared in the Tauranga District Court on Wednesday after Black earlier pleaded guilty to four charges.
The first and most serious charge was attempting to infect a person with a disease, which attracts a maximum sentence of seven years’ prison. Black also earlier admitted charges of wilful trespass, resisting police and assaulting a person with a blunt instrument.
Judge Connell said there were only two options: either send Black to prison given his past record of violent offending or impose a rehabilitative sentence.
The court heard that on October 13 last year Black was seen trying to conceal bottles of liquor down his pants at Liquorland store in Devonport Rd, Tauranga.
Black become abusive and threatened to “smash” the manager and the store when asked to leave, and the manager and another staff member locked themselves in an office.
Police attended but could not find Black, who returned to the store two hours later and tried to hit the store manager in the head with a metal can, but he deflected the blow. The manager then pushed Black outside and locked the store.
Police found Black inside a bedroom at a nearby address a short time later, and he had bloody wounds on his feet and a hand.
Black told the arresting officer that he needed his medication and footwear before leaving. He then used his fingers to wipe fresh blood from the floor and lunged at the face of one of the two officers with his hand, saying: “Have some hep C”.
Hepatitis C is an infectious bloodborne disease.
The officer was able to stop Black’s bloody hand about 5cm from his face.
Black also resisted the police officers’ attempts to handcuff him, and he repeatedly flailed at police with his bloodied hand and also tried to kick the police with his bloody feet. He had to be carried to the patrol car and made specific threats to shoot both officers.
Black’s lawyer Tony Balme urged Judge Connell to show some compassion to his client, saying he had a lot of health difficulties.
This included the cumulative effects of “decades of alcoholism and drug use”, he said.
Balme said Black, who consumed synthetic cannabis that day and had a violent reaction and was awaiting more tests for a serious bowel problem. Black also recently had a quite serious fall and he was physically frail, and if sent to prison there was a high risk he would end up living on the streets on his release, he said.
The court heard that Black’s GP had confirmed that at the time of this offending the defendant was no longer infectious with hepatitis C.
Black and the victim of the liquor store assault offence had participated in a “very successful, very positive” restorative justice meeting, Balme said.
Black was sincere in his desire to rehabilitate himself but he was “very poorly equipped” to be able to manage himself and Balme urged Judge Connell to impose a supervision sentence.
Judge Connell said Black’s actions towards the police were “shocking and shameful”.
“In this day and age, the serious consequences of being infected with any disease is something we are all too well aware of. Clearly, you were cleared of having a disease [hepatitis C] in May 2020, but the Sergeant did not know that and naturally, he was concerned as any other human being would be.
“You were callous in my view and quite cruel. And you were also quite violent and abusive towards the police and the liquor store manager.”
However, Judge Connell said he was prepared to give Black a chance to redeem himself, and imposed 12 months’ intensive supervision on the attempt to infect with a disease charge. The judge also gave him a three-strikes warning and convicted and discharged Black on the other three charges.
Judge Connell told Black that he would be subject to 12 months’ judicial monitoring and if he failed to complete his sentence he would send him to prison.