Family living in hell
The country’s emergency housing crisis is causing debilitating long-term harm to families in our community.
Levin woman Mishana Anderson is a solo mum to two children aged four and five. Her son is autistic, noncommunicative and becomes upset with changes in his routine and surroundings.
Mishana is educated, articulate, with excellent references and the ability to pay up to $400 a week in rent, yet she is currently struggling to live in a tiny motel unit in the town with her children and one bag of clothes each.
Her only option is to rely on Work and Income to pay for the emergency accommodation at $1200 per week — a much higher rate than rent and every dollar of which she will have to pay back.
Ironically, the accommodation supplement she used to receive has now been stopped too, which would be money off the debt burden and which will affect her living circumstances for at least the next decade of her life, making dreams of ever owning her own home or saving for the future further away than ever.
Her son is showing signs of her circumstances causing lasting trauma and the family has had weeks of sleepless nights as he struggles with the different sounds, smells and sights around him.
Motel doors that lock and unlock from the inside mean he can escape from the room if she doesn’t supervise him constantly, even having to leave the bathroom door open when she is in there so he doesn’t make a run for it.
Outside, there are no fences and there is nowhere for children to play, just a carpark and several other units, which Mishana says are also full of people in emergency housing situations paid for by WINZ as the debts creep up and up.
While the motel owner has been courteous, Mishana says she was reminded when she moved in that it is a business with other guests coming and going, so the children needed to be kept quiet, and she is acutely aware of the close living quarters she is in.
It is one of the very few places in town that will take emergency housing applicants, she says.
The owners have told her they want to keep their business anonymous as they say they have been criticised by other accommodation businesses for lowering the tone of their industry, adding to the sense of humiliation the young mother feels.
After six weeks in the motel and more than $7000 of extra debt accrued in her name, Mishana’s circumstances show just how precarious renting can be, especially for a young solo mother.
She previously rented privately for four years, working a job she fitted around the care of her children.
She kept her home tidy and maintained, paid her rent on time and made friends with her neighbours.
When her landlord decided to sell the property, she was given six weeks’ notice to move out and given an excellent reference.
‘I’ve applied for everything but I get judged for being a solo mum. I feel so stereotyped.’
An offer of a promotion in Auckland meant she looked for rentals there initially, but quickly realising just how squeezed the Auckland rental market is, and with time running out, she began to look in Levin and Palmerston North too.
Here, the reality of homelessness began to creep in, as she discovered just how much of a hindrance being a solo mum with children was when trying to secure a new home.
While her employer was able to put her job on hold for her while she concentrated on resolving her living situation, she soon found it was her family circumstances that played the biggest part in the rejections she received when applying for houses to rent.
“I’ve had maybe 10 people say to my face they don’t want children,” she said.
“The real estate agent showing me one place apologised to me after a landlord came out from his neighbouring home when he saw me and point-blank told me he didn’t want children in the house.”
“Some houses, I’m told they’re “too nice” for children and they are advertising for a professional couple.
“We’ve been shown houses in bad condition, I’ve applied for everything but I get judged for being a solo mum.
“I feel so stereotyped.”
“I can understand landlords being strict about who they let into their houses, but I feel like my situation has become ridiculous.”
Mishana contacted Housing NZ well before the six weeks notice on her last rental expired to try and seek assistance, but was told they couldn’t help her until the tenancy had actually ended.
“I was told to come back when I was homeless,” she said.
With no family nearby except her mother who lives in a tiny one-bedroom unit, Mishana is at her wits’ end.
While she is trying to maintain as much positivity around the children as possible, she is spending hours filling out rental applications, going to viewings and continually taking evidence of her search in to the local WINZ office to prove she needs the help.
“It feels like I’m a failing mother,” she said, her emotions clearly visible.
“You always want to provide stability for your children. I walk down the street and seem to see so many empty houses.
“Who are they for? It doesn’t make sense at all.”
She has been worried her initial standards were too high when looking for a home, but says all she has wanted all along is to find somewhere safe and decent for her children, with insulation to help reduce the number of winter hospital admissions caused by her son’s asthma.
Mishana says she has resorted to applying for any house she can find to get her family out of the motel and the debt trap she is in, and is speaking out about her situation because so many people across the county are in similar circumstances.
She doesn’t know how the situation has come to this point, with a rental housing crisis of massive proportions, she says.
“If something is being done about homelessness, it is not enough,” she says.
“[My situation] is not setting me up for much except paying bills back for the next 10 years.”
“Other people might think about buying a house, travelling or saving. Those just are farfetched dreams for people in my circumstances,” she says.
“Putting roots down just feels like wishful thinking.”