Helping homeless: Big Sleepout returns fire

Organisers behind the annual event that sees dozens of people rough it for a night on a cold concrete slab to draw attention to homelessness, say it is more than just an empty gesture.

This year Lifewise hopes to raise more than $350,000 at the Big Sleepout on July 6 at the AUT city campus.

Big names at this year’s event include Auckland mayor Phil Goff, Bachelor NZ runner-up Lily McManus, and MaiFM’s Dani Fennessy.

A fortnight ago the event copped criticism in a Herald on Sunday column by Paul Little.

He described it as being little more than a meaningless activity that did nothing to solve homelessness.

However, Lifewise chief executive Moira Lawler said the money from this year’s event would help the many youth living on the streets.

“In Auckland, if you are under 18, there is no emergency accommodation. There is absolutely nowhere for young people to go while they wait to get into our transitional accommodation.”

She said more than 41,000 New Zealanders had no place to call home. Over half of these were under 25 and a quarter of these were still children.

Lawler said due to the $347,760 it raised at the Big Sleepout in 2016 almost a hundred had been given a place to live, while others were supported by the organisation’s networks.

More than $200,000 was spent on at the Hub service on K’Rd which helped 300 people with a variety of things including, accessing their benefit entitlements, getting an ID card, and health and personal issues.

Seventy-four people were helped into a house, either emergency, temporary or permanent. This money also helped Lifewise establish the Housing First Programme.

The programme aims to prioritise getting people into a house and giving them the consistent support to stay in it.

A further $102,260 from the Big Sleepout 2016 went towards the running of the programme, which in four months has helped house and support 15 people.

Rainbow Youth also received $26,000 from the Big Sleepout 2016 for it to employ a support worker specifically for LGBTQI youth.

Rainbow youth communications manager Toni Duder said this gave LGBTQI youth the help they needed to get into safe home.

It would also help them research what led to these youth ending up on the street and how best to help them.

One young man they helped wanted to remain anonymous, but shared some of his insights about life on the streets.

“I fell through the cracks, there weren’t many avenues in place guiding me to where I needed to be.”

He said being homeless was not a choice for himself, or for the growing number of youth that were homeless.

“If it’s out of an option of an abusive environment versus being homeless sometimes, being homeless is better.”

Little stood by his column, saying he’d leave it at what he wrote.