Former homeless get hope
It may not be the city’s most luxurious accommodation, but for Kirsty Fensom the one-bedroom unit at a Christchurch motel is ‘‘bliss’’.
Before coming to the motel, the 34-yearold had spent 16 months at temporary accommodation including friend’s couches, short-term social housing and a women’s refuge.
At her lowest point she spent three nights on a bench in Hagley Park.
Her studio unit has a small kitchen, bathroom, two double beds and Sky TV.
Fensom can’t believe her luck has changed so radically.
‘‘Even getting into a bed, it had been a long time since I’d laid down on a bed so getting into it was ahhh ... bliss.’’
Fensom is one of nearly 1000 homeless people around the country who have been provided with motel accommodation as a result of the Covid-19 response.
When the Government announced the level four lockdown, Fensom had been sleeping on a couch at a friend’s place.
She couldn’t stay as the two-bedroom unit was already too small for the friend and her four children.
About a month earlier her GP referred her to Housing First, a government-funded programme to house and support the chronically homeless.
The organisation was processing Fensom’s application when Alert Level 4 was announced.
Within days, she was in a room at the City Worcester motels. Later she moved to her current accommodation, which was large enough for her two primary schoolaged children to stay every second weekend.
Fensom said her life unravelled after a 15-year relationship with her children’s father ended in early 2018.
Losing custody of her children changed her entitlements from the Ministry of Social Development and resulted in a huge drop in her income.
Left with about $75 a week after weekly debt payments, Fensom could no longer afford to pay rent and became homeless.
Christchurch Methodist Mission chief executive Jill Hawkey said housing provided for the homeless in empty motels was a ‘‘good news story’’ to come out of the coronavirus response.
Social welfare agencies were instructed to find all homeless people and take them to their new motel lodgings.
Within a week the homeless problem was almost solved completely.
Hawkey said in Christchurch 77 people who had been living on the streets, in sheds, garages and cars or ‘‘couch surfing’’ with friends were taken to one of about 10 motels. Nationwide, formerly homeless people were now housed and supported in 876 motel units across the country.
The motel manager where Fenson has been placed did not want to be named but said 10 of its 14 motel units were occupied by homeless people.
He declined to comment further. On Sunday Housing Minister Megan Woods announced another $107.6 million for 1600 motel units to keep them housed ‘‘for the longer term’’.