NZ homeless levels ‘world’s worst’
Paratahi Tahuriorangi decided to leave his life as a Mongrel Mob gang leader on the streets of Auckland behind to return to his Rotorua roots eight years ago.
Tahuriorangi, better known as ‘‘Hombre", walked into Rotorua’s Government Gardens and fell asleep. He had no dependants, no money, no work – and no home.
The 69-year-old pensioner has slept in a shed at the back of the gardens many times. His first stretch lasted for three-anda-half years. After a short spell living with family, he was out on his own again. Occasionally he was able to stay with family and friends, but he reckons he was homeless for about four-and-a-half years in total. It didn’t bother him, though.
‘‘I thought, ‘This is real life. If I can face all that stuff in the Mongrel Mob, why can’t I face this?’.’’
If he had a blanket, he was happy. ‘‘I didn’t care where I was or how I was, you know? I didn’t care where I slept.’’
There were about 15 other homeless people living in the park at the time, all sleeping in different places, Hombre says. His bout living in the gardens started after he was caught sleeping on a flight of stairs at the back of Rotorua Hospital. Hombre had been sleeping there unnoticed for months when he ‘‘got shanghaied’’ and kicked off the property.
His routine when homeless involved sleeping during the day for as long as he could, before leaving his blanket and belongings under a concrete lip in the central city while he moved around at night to keep warm.
Back to his roots
Hombre grew up on the outskirts of Rotorua, but he lived in Auckland for much of his adult life. He was one of the founding members of the Mongrel Mob. When he was president of a Mob chapter in Auckland, he had ‘‘certain rules’’ he had to live by.
He moved south in 2009 when his house burnt down after two of his nieces left a heater on. ‘‘I’ve been retired from the Mongrel
Mob since then. I came back down here and became a homie.’’
Homeless charity Love Soup Rotorua feeds and supports people in need. They helped Hombre into a two-bedroom house in March, 2016, just days after he approached them for help.
Hombre is grateful to Love
Soup for giving him a home base and is ‘‘not in a hurry’’ to live in the streets or the gardens again. He still struggles, though. He gets $650 a fortnight on the pension, but $480 of that goes on rent.
‘‘You can have a home but no money because of the cost of rent and the way things are,’’ he says.
He helps Love Soup by volunteering when he can, but the group’s husband-and-wife cofounders Gina and Elmer Peiffer mostly just look after him.
‘‘If I go for dinner, he just gets me to go and sit at the table. He says: ‘Get over there, Hombre, sit down. Think you’re 21 or something? Behave yourself’.’’
But Hombre likes to help people in need because he knows better than most what it feels like to have that need.
‘‘I’ve had people that helped me – generous people that didn’t care what I looked like, but helped me anyway. I was a gang member and we couldn’t afford to live like how I am now.’’
Part of the reason behind Hombre’s return to Rotorua was he wanted to leave his Mongrel Mob past behind.
‘‘I knew I was getting too old. I said, ‘One day yous [sic] are not going to listen because you’ll think I’m an old fart.’ That’s why I came back here, because I was getting older. I came back to my roots.’’
Demographic change
Salvation Army social housing national director Greg Foster’s work focuses on helping people older than 55 who cannot afford to rent or buy property. He says there is a demographic change taking place in New Zealand.
‘‘More and more baby boomers are hitting retirement age,’’ he says. ‘‘And with the number of people who don’t own homes, I think that as they age and are still renting, they may not have the means the ways to actually rent in the private sector any more.’’
There is a growing proportion of people over 65 who end up in social housing because they rely on their superannuation with minimal savings, he says.
‘‘Unless they win the Lotto they are going to be there for the rest of their lives. Some of them have very sad stories – some have no contact with family. It’s probably a reflection on the country.’’
Hidden homelessness
Rotorua man Patrick Perston, 33, lived in his Mazda Sedan in the town for six weeks after his relationship ended in February.
Love Soup worked with Work and Income to get Perston into emergency housing when he was referred to them by the police, but Perston did not feel safe there.
Elmer Peiffer says they contacted a property agent and found him a two-bedroom house a few days later.
‘‘You can’t give vulnerable people a timeline and say, ‘We’ll give you this much and then leave.’ Services do that and think the obligation is done, but it’s not,’’ says the Love Soup co-founder.
Gina Peiffer believes many services that receive funding to deal with homelessness are simply ‘‘ticking the boxes and getting paid’’ when they should be prioritising ongoing support.
‘‘These are people who have lived on the street for 30 years – they don’t know how to live indoors. We have to teach them how to live inside a house, pay rent, pay bills,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s really vital that you gain their trust because they’ve been screwed over so many times by so many different people and they’re over it.’’
Gina Peiffer says when many organisations close down from December 15 to January 15, homeless people feel ‘‘alone and abandoned’’.
‘‘There’s nobody there. And that’s our highest suicide rate time of the year for homeless people,’’ she says.
‘‘I’ve had mums who have messaged me and said, ‘I’ve just taken out life insurance so my kids have something if I’m not here,’ because that’s how desperate they are. They don’t see any light at the end of that tunnel.’’
Everybody eats
Nick Loosley runs a pay-as-youfeel restaurant, Everybody Eats, in St Kevin’s Arcade in Auckland. Homeless people, pensioners, families and young professionals all get the chance to dine together.
The restaurant feeds 200-300 people every Monday night, except over the holiday period. People who cannot afford to pay don’t have to.
‘‘We welcome everyone. We want this to be something that everyone can come to – that’s why we called it Everybody Eats,’’ the restaurant’s founder says.
‘‘One of the most important things is having different people from different communities, cultures, walks of life sharing food at the same table,’’ Loosley says. ‘‘We think it’s a really powerful concept.’’
The owner of Gemmayze St restaurant lets Everybody Eats use the kitchen. They salvage food from supermarkets twice a week with rescue charity Kiwi Harvest and about 30 different volunteers give their time for free – including five or six chefs, dishwashers and front of house staff.
Volunteer Vernon Sorenson, who used to be homeless himself, knows most of the people that come for dinner. ‘‘They’re my friends and they respect me,’’ he says. ‘‘I feel a sense of belonging here.’’
Cramped conditions
Formerly homeless woman Alisia Finau lives in a two-bedroom house in Hillsborough, Auckland, with her two sons, daughter and cousin.
‘‘The struggle is real,’’ she says. ‘‘You try being homeless.’’
The 39-year-old Tongan New Zealander lived in a van for three months in 2016 with her daughter Pakiteina Thompson, now 15, sons Te Ahuru Ote Rangi Thompson, 18, Ngataiawa Thompson, 17, her elderly mother and dog.
At the time, Pakiteina refused to live in the van and demanded that social services intervene. Child, Youth and Family (now the Ministry for Vulnerable Children) moved her to live with relatives 450 kilometres south of Auckland. She has only just moved back home to her mother.
‘‘My daughter’s only just come back to me,’’ Finau says. ‘‘She wants her own room and my boys need their own rooms.’’
Finau’s story was first shared by Al Jazeera in 2016. She believes the story is responsible for pulling her family out of homelessness.
‘‘They actually helped us get into a house. The article made Housing New Zealand do their job and get us into a home straight away. Beforehand we were getting mucked around – moving around hotels for 11 weeks, sitting on waiting lists.’’
Finau loves her house, but it is not big enough for five people. She has asked Work and Income for a bigger home. Her two sons sleep in one room, her cousin in the other. Her bed is propped up in the shed, not able to be used because it doesn’t fit in the living room. She sleeps on the couch with Pakiteina.
‘‘There’s no room. There’s only room for the TV and couches.’’
‘‘I didn’t care where I was or how I was, you know? I didn’t care where I slept.’’
‘Trying to survive’
Finau’s family lives day-by-day off their benefit money.
‘‘Once the rent is paid and the car is paid, the five of us are lucky to be left with $80 for food for the week. That’s not very much,’’ Finau says. ‘‘We’re just trying to survive.’’
Finau had a job packing hampers for Chriscoes in 2016, but the work dried up after four weeks. She is hunting for jobs, but she struggles to meet the criteria expected of applicants on benefits.
‘‘Drug tests, criminal history, all the documents – what more can we do?’’
Hardship is on the rise in New Zealand, Finau says.
‘‘There’s still a lot of people living in cars, and some people are so quiet about it they live in sheds. There’s still a lot of people sleeping in their cars in Mangere and Orewa – a good 100, maybe even 150,’’ she says.
‘‘They’re shy, and they feel shame. But I’d rather be shamed and have a roof over my head than live in a car.’’
‘Worst in the world’
On a bad night, there could be 41,705 homeless Kiwis – if not more. That figure comes from the 2013 census, and Labour’s Housing Minister Phil Twyford says the number will have increased over the past four years.
He says New Zealand has ‘‘the worst level of homelessness in the world’’.
Salvation Army head of welfare Pam Waugh oversees the charity’s work with homeless families. She says about 1800 people – families and individuals – have been housed in emergency housing in the Army’s centres since July 2016.
There is a wide scope of issues that can lead to a family becoming homeless, Waugh says.
‘‘We work with them and try to unfold all that stuff. We look at why they have not been able to sustain homes, and provide social work, counselling, mentoring.’’
Emergency housing is available to homeless people for three months, and then get three months of additional support.
Children need stability of housing, health needs, schooling and social inclusion, she says.
‘‘Homelessness disrupts their learning. They are stressed by the added burden of homelessness, and that creates a few mental health issues. They get stressed, lonely, isolated.’’
What counts as homeless?
Homelessness is defined in New Zealand as: ‘‘Living situations where people with no other options to acquire safe and secure housing are: without shelter, in temporary accommodation, sharing accommodation with a household, or living in uninhabitable housing.’’
So while some homeless
Kiwis may actually have a roof over their heads, they don’t have a home.