Power of a shower and chat when living on city’s streets
SHAMPOO fragrance wafts from the back door of the orange van as Toby steps onto the inner-city footpath, dabbing a towel at his dripping, grey hair.
‘‘It’s such an important thing when you’re homeless, to be able to have a shower and wash your clothes,’’ says Toby, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy. ‘‘You feel like a new person. Well, a normal person.’’
Pre-empting the cold night ahead, he layers on clothes. He could do with a haircut, he says.
A barber offering free cuts from a trailer on nearby Chancery St has just left, but he’ll be back today when church groups and charities gather again to help people living on the streets.
As well as a shower cubicle, the Orange Sky van Toby has emerged from has two washing machines, two dryers and two 200-litre tanks for clean and grey water.
It is one of two operating a mobile laundry and shower service in Auckland, with another running in Christchurch since May. The Wellington van has laundry facilities.
Originally intended to help out the homeless, Orange Sky operations manager Eddie Uini says since the Covid-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crisis have hit, he’s seen a growing need for the service in the suburbs. As well as operating around Auckland’s inner city, van shifts run in Glen Eden, Henderson, New Lynn, Manurewa and Onehunga. ‘‘There’s a rising need with families doing it tough.’’ They have a roof over their heads but they can’t afford to do the washing, he says.
Uini’s dream is that everyone has access to a warm shower and clean clothes. The impact on lives when such a fundamental need goes unmet struck Uini, 33, several years ago when he had taken a career
U-turn. After 10 years as a youth worker, he was in the first year of a quantity surveying degree and living in Manurewa when he learnt that a young man had died of an infection while living on local streets. ‘‘He was too embarrassed to go to the doctor because he hadn’t washed his clothes or had a shower.’’
So Uini started hanging out at a laundromat, paying to wash the clothes of people who needed it.
Realising the need was wide (41,644 people were categorised as ‘‘severely housing deprived’’ in New Zealand at the time of the 2018 census), he got in touch with Orange Sky, which had started a van service offering clothes washes and showers to Brisbane’s homeless.
Uini ditched the degree and the first Orange Sky van, named Hugo after the Hugo Charitable Trust that paid for it, hit
Auckland’s streets in 2018. Some of the ‘‘friends’’, as people using the service are known, hadn’t had a shower for three or four months.
But it’s not just the shower that Toby has come for. Arranged around the back of the van are half a dozen fold-out orange chairs and a couple of Orange Sky volunteers sit chatting with Uini when Toby joins the conversation. He says he has used this service in Brisbane where ‘‘it was like a social club’’.
‘‘You get all these homeless people who come from a really wide background. And the types of people that turn up to help, the volunteers, are really interesting people,’’ says Toby. ‘‘You never know when your luck turns in this world. It can go up or down.
Already mid-conversation, another man takes an orange seat. He’s not here for a shower tonight, just to talk. He gestures to the surrounding buildings, glowing brightly now it’s dark. The city has plenty of showers, he says, but the one in this van is the only one his friends can use.
Auckland’s two vans run seven days a week. Uini says he could easily keep another couple busy. Costs are met by sponsors, the Ministry of Housing and Orange Sky’s own fundraising initiative, The Sudsy Challenging. Running till the end of this month, the fundraiser aims to wash away the stigmas of homelessness by challenging Kiwis to wear the same clothes for three consecutive days.