A setup that suits
57 Manners Street – otherwise known as The Setup on Manners – is at the sharp end of the housing crisis, and the centre of violent debate about Wellington’s troubled central business district. Ethan Te Ora and photographer Kevin Stent met people who live
Daphany Haenga wanted a room with a window, and now she has one. The view from her fifth-floor flat at The Setup on Manners in central Wellington looks down on to a back alley, where drug deals are thrashed out, night and day. Inside her two-bedroom flat, she feels insulated from the streets below.
‘‘You can hear them screaming, swearing, fighting,’’ she says. ‘‘But then you close the window, and you can’t hear them.’’
The 40-year-old lived at a private rental in the suburb of Northland with her children until July last year, when a sublease agreement unravelled. She camped out in a car for three months, before bouncing between several hotel-based emergency housing providers dotted throughout the city like a constellation of ugly stars.
The first room – a block away, at The Setup on Dixon – was windowless. Haenga, who lives at the apartment with her 17-year-old daughter, moved six times over the past six months.
It’s not an uncommon story. The machinery of emergency housing held 622 Wellington households in its gears at last count. The people in those households are signed on to short-term contracts by the
Ministry of Social Development, known as Emergency Housing Special Needs Grants, one week at a time.
But those contracts aren’t protected by the Residential Tenancies Act, giving people in emergency housing a shaky claim on the title ‘‘tenant’’, and no certainty of shelter beyond seven days. On the other hand, the contracts sometimes roll over indefinitely – in some cases for years – because the actual social housing wait list now exceeds 22,000 people.
Haenga has re-signed her contract twice since moving into her apartment two weeks ago.
It’s her second stint at The Setup on Manners, a 10-storey building, which was converted from office space in the late 1990s, then repurposed again as emergency housing over the past 18 months. That first stay, on the top floor earlier this year, lasted only six weeks and was characterised by troubling violence and disorder.
Another tenant, who was also on the 10th floor seeing out a fixedterm residential lease around the same time, described the environment as ‘‘like a hellscape’’. That tenant, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, called The Setup a ‘‘government-funded gang pad’’, in reference to a high level of crime on site.
Haenga agrees with those statements. There was a ‘‘rough crowd’’ in the building at that time, she says.
The last straw for her was an ‘‘upsetting incident’’, which she mentions obliquely, lowering her eyes. She requested – and was granted – a transfer back to The Setup on Dixon.
‘‘We didn’t feel safe here.’’ At first, Haenga was reluctant to return. But the prospect of a larger flat, on an otherwise unoccupied floor, sweetened the deal.
Now, there are rules, a requirement that is rare among emergency housing hotels, introduced to the flats four months ago: no parties, no guests, no gang patches, no drinking, no drugs, no smoking, or vaping inside.
It seems to be working. ‘‘People used to argue every day, have fights,’’ Haenga says. ‘‘Trash the room, damage things, break things, steal things. But you don’t see that any more. It’s not as bad now.’’
The Setup on Manners is up the road from the troubled Te Aro Park, ground zero of a fierce debate around crime and safety on Wellington’s inner-city streets.
Sharon Isaac, who is the operations manager at the building, says there is no crossover
in patronage between the provider and the park. ‘‘The people that you see constantly in the park, drinking, causing havoc, they live on the streets. They’re not actually living under our roof, they’re not living with us.’’
Another debate swirls around whom emergency housing really benefits. Some say the provision has become a cottage industry for hoteliers, who were reeling from a downturn in guests following border closures, rather than a secure lifeline for people with no other option.
There were 69 emergency housing providers in the city at the end of December. Throughout the wider Wellington region, there was a total of 209 on that same date. The Setup has reaped more profit than any of them, except for the Harbour City Motor Inn in Webb St. By April, the Ministry of Social Development had paid the Manners St hotel $1.81 million towards Emergency Housing Special Needs Grants.
Wellington regional director Jamie Robinson says the ministry does not want people sleeping rough, or in cars, and tries to place people in accommodations suitable for them. ‘‘This is why we use emergency housing providers.’’
Providers are expected to meet all relevant standards set by regulatory authorities, such as Wellington City Council. The ministry does not carry out regular inspections at The Setup, or any other accommodations used for emergency housing
Alex Cassels has owned The Setup on Manners since 2015, when he converted levels two and three into a budget hotel. He manages a diverse property portfolio throughout the central city, including a suite of residential apartment buildings and another emergency housing provider in Ghuznee St.
There are about 100 people in emergency accommodation across those two sites. But Cassels says he
‘‘doesn’t want to talk about people in emergency housing.’’.
‘‘It’s very disrespectful – it upsets me, actually,’’ the 39-yearold property developer says. ‘‘They are not second-class people. I deal with them all the time now. They’re people like you and me, and we need to respect them the same way, and give them the same basic dignity. Otherwise, we’re creating a two-tier society, and that’s just not on.’’
Although his business currently profits from the emergency housing model, Cassels says he saw increased need rather than dollar signs. Emergency housing is flawed, and he hopes for its eventual obsolescence.
He frequently name-drops Murray Edridge, the Wellington city missioner, when talking about the best way forward, namely transitional housing.
Transitional housing providers function more as a wraparound service, aiming to surround people with supports they need. There is a floor dedicated to transitional housing on level two of The Setup, housing around 20 people, managed by the Wellington City Mission through a contract with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.
Since the Mission moved in during the early weeks of lockdown, providing shelter for former residents of the rundown Night Shelter, its staff have also offered ad-hoc support to the residents in emergency housing at the floor above. ‘‘Like any good neighbour,’’ Edridge says.
But the neighbour is moving out at the end of next month, relocating into the former Wild Zebra Backpackers site in Tory St, refurbished over the past few months with the assistance of
Cassels, who also owns the backpackers.
But The Setup will continue. An ‘‘imperfect step’’ towards something else, Cassels says. And the people whose needs are too complex for the provider are someone else’s problem for now. ‘‘We’ve had people in the past who we’ve had to rehouse, because they have needs we don’t feel equipped to deal with. The best thing we can do is try to provide as much support as we can, while they’re at the property.
‘‘What those people do in the streets is their business. They have to take responsibility for that themselves.’’
The lights are out in the corridor leading from the lift into Susan’s 10th-floor apartment, but light streams into the flat from the balcony.
This is her happy place. The place that saved her, and her 18-year-old twin daughters.
Around two years ago, Susan received a 90-day nocause eviction notice at a private rental property in Strathmore, where she had lived for six years. It was a second seismic life shock, after being laid off from a job at a community op shop a few years previously.
‘‘At that point, looking for some place else to rent, there was nothing I could afford,’’ she says. ‘‘You can’t pre-book emergency housing – you’ve gotta have nowhere to sleep that night. Eventually I had nowhere to go.’’
Susan and her daughters moved into The Setup just before Christmas in 2019. They were the first emergency housing guests on the premises. At the time, there were long-term residential tenants on levels five to 10, while levels two and three still operated as a budget hotel.
But as the leases in those upper apartments came up, Cassels hasn’t renewed them, instead refurbishing the flats to comply with Healthy Homes standards and then releasing them again as emergency housing. Five apartments have been upgraded, then filled by families so far.
‘‘My emergency accommodation is serving me really well,’’ Susan says. ‘‘It’s beautiful, it’s clean. My children are flourishing, which is a miracle in and of itself, given what we’ve been through.’’
Most things inside the apartment are thrifted: a cushion
Susan, who doesn’t wish us to use her surname, lives on the top floor of The Setup on Manners. covered in cat fur – at the time of purchase, and now – cost $1, she says. The four-bedroom apartment would easily go for $1000 a week on the private rental market.
Susan says a case manager at the Ministry of Social Development recently suggested separating her from her daughters, relocating them into separate emergency accommodations. ‘‘That’s the biggest freakout for me. If you’re trying to separate us, how many families have you separated just to get them off the emergency books?
‘‘We’re a family; this is our home. It’s not Winz’s fault, Winz is under pressure.’’
Mark Jones lives seven levels below, on level three: the floor where most emergency housing residents at the hotel stay – 34 of 38 rooms are currently occupied by singles or couples.
Jones reads The Economist ona park bench below the apartments each day. He doesn’t mind the traffic from Manners Mall, a main thoroughfare for the city’s bus service, connecting the business and cultural districts.
Jones is a passenger in transit himself. He returned in December from Argentina, where he has lived with intermittent excursions home since 1977. He came back to save his eyesight. ‘‘It was a very, very delicate procedure,’’ he says of the operation, performed by a Londontrained specialist in Dunedin.
He didn’t expect to be here now. But with borders closed, he doesn’t expect to be able to leave for a while, perhaps not until September. Seven co-dependants, children and grandchildren, wait for him in Argentina, as well as a fishing business, stalled during the pandemic. ‘‘My eyes are still adjusting to their new world,’’ the 73-year-old says.
He doesn’t recognise any contradiction in the predicament that forces him to live in emergency housing, while still being able to financially support family overseas. ‘‘The cost of living over there is much cheaper. I can support a family member for a month with $100 from my pension.’’
He adamantly believes the accommodation is his right as a New Zealand citizen, considering the ‘‘failures of government over decades’’, leading to a severe housing shortage, and pushing private rentals out of reach.
But Jones has no qualms about The Setup, aside from what he considers poor ventilation in his room. ‘‘That’s not a complaint about the running of the place, that’s a feature of the building itself. The place is very well run.
‘‘My room is inspected every week, and serviced every week, the people who do it are very thoughtful, and considerate, and polite. If you need anything, they’ll do it.’’
The problems of the streets below – drugs, alcohol and violence – don’t enter the building, or at least not for long, he says.
‘‘Some of the people have serious alcohol problems,’’ he says. ‘‘If they cause any disturbance, they’re weeded out – and Winz puts them somewhere else. Any suggestions otherwise are just hysteria.’’
City councillor Teri O’Neill wants to see that hysteria die down. She has challenged inner-city residents to consider how they talk about people in emergency housing. ‘‘Focus on what we can do to reduce community harm, how can we all feel safe in our city without putting a group of people down and stereotyping them, or engaging in racist narratives and attitudes.
‘‘If you’re a leader coming with that public discourse, maybe think about how you can make that space safer.’’
Wellington City Council is currently exploring two community sites in Manners St: one would be a community centre – a lounge, and hangout spot – while the other would operate as an information centre to assess people’s housing needs. O’Neill hopes those plans will be finalised in the next few months.
The future of 57 Manners St is in flux. In theory, the emergency housing operation could wrap up in a matter of weeks. But then where would residents go?
Another possibility is bringing a community housing provider like the City Mission on board, and running transitional housing out of the building. Then there’s the possibility the old status quo will reassert itself.
‘‘If things return to normal, there’s a viable hotel there,’’ says Cassels. ‘‘Obviously residential apartments upstairs, fully compliant with Healthy Homes, will rent easily in Wellington.’’
Haenga’s future is also in flux, but she has clear goals for the year ahead. She studies online during the day towards a marketing qualification, while scouring listings for private rentals by night.
She wants a real home for herself and her children, two of whom have moved to Christchurch to stay with other family. Not a room in emergency housing, or one in transitional housing.
‘‘I want a big house for me and my kids. Then we’d be really happy.’’