Bridge dwellers: Homeless, on drugs and playing rugby with police

Saturday, 15 September 2018

Auckland Council's Homeless Count will kick off tomorrow region-wide. It will count the city's rough sleepers to fully grasp the scale of homelessness. Amanda Saxton took to the streets to learn about those on society's edge in the city, whose current way of life the council hopes to eliminate.

Every Friday for the past dozen-odd weeks, rough sleepers have played rugby against the police at West Auckland's Olympic Park.

On these mornings, the homeless emerge sluggishly from beneath their bridge. If none show, a cop gets dispatched like a harried heading dog to muster anyone fit to play. He'll return empty-handed if everyone down there's zombied-out on synthetic cannabis.

A rotating cast of up to 25 people has been living under the railway bridge at Olympic Park since summer. Many are in their teens and 20s; they're runaways or recently out of jail. Most tell us it's the only place they've ever felt safe or wanted.

That's mainly thanks to a veteran vagrant named Andrew who the bridge dwellers call 'dad'.  Andrew has only two rules for the community he founded: 'no thieving and you have to look after each other'.

**READ MORE:

* Bridge dwellers: a homemade toilet and semi-pet rats

* They fight, take drugs, and sleep rough: can the chronically homeless be saved?

* From the Hilton to homeless: An alcoholic's tale**

He gathers those with nowhere to go off the streets of New Lynn while out hustling. He gives them a place to sleep, food, and if they're interested, synthetic cannabis. They are always interested, and aren't the only ones. A steady stream of foot traffic makes its way through the flax bushes to the motley collection of sofas and humans under the bridge each day – the place is a hub for addicts.

Their erratic behaviour and sprawling rubbish upset other park-goers. But when the council asked police to remove the bridge dwellers a few months ago, senior constable Tony Tatupu requested a grace period. He wanted to try using rugby as a way to engage with the homeless instead of simply locking some up and sweeping others under the next bridge.

That's how the police joined an array of other agencies and individuals already trying to get the bridge dwellers off drugs and housed.

A LONG TERM FIX

Tatupu was a professional league player before becoming a cop and sees sport 'as a vehicle to get a rapport going, to build the relationship that lets you find out someone's purpose'.

He's seen too many rough sleepers chucked into jail or pushed into housing only to wind up on the streets again. What's effective in the long term, he says, is identifying personal goals – be they gaining visitation rights to your kids or a full driver's license – then showing people how wrap-around rehabilitation services can help them reach their goal.

'Basically, we've taken the approach that we can't force people into homes, but we can give them the opportunity to make better choices for themselves,' he says.

Andrew was appointed captain of the homeless team. As he had some hours of community service owing when the games were initiated, Tatupu told him rallying the bridge dwellers to play each Friday could count as community service. That's how the homeless crew got involved, though Tatupu reckons they also liked the idea of beating a traditional foe on the field.

Under the bridge, before matches, bravado brews.

'Where are your rugby boots, bro?' asks Richard, a 22-year-old who moved there after a stint in prison for aggravated robbery. 'I've never left the field without a try, eh.'

Most often cops far outnumber the homeless, however. One Friday from the sidelines, sitting with the nurses and social workers there to mingle with bridge dwellers after the match, we see only one representative from the bridge on the field – a 16-year-old girl with long black hair.

She slips between the towering policemen, fist bumping one after scoring a try. They know her well. Tatupu says while officers regularly return her to her family, she always makes her way back to the bridge. Her mum's taken to visiting her at Olympic Park, bringing food for the whole crew.

'A CRUSHER OF MORAL JUDGEMENT'

Leaning against the field's railing, a young cop talks earnestly to a local nurse about how people revert back to bad habits when times get tough. He's referring to smoking synthetics and says it's the only tool some people know of for dulling the pain of a relationship break-up or coping with a dysfunctional family. It's also – the nurse points out - highly, highly addictive.

Synthetic cannabis' victims are in plain sight on an average day in New Lynn, especially around Olympic Park. They sit slumped on the footpath until they keel over, cheeks to the concrete. They lie on the grass with shirts or skirts hitched up, obliviously showing off marbled tummies and thighs. Or they roam the park, jittery and incoherent.

The drug is West Auckland's biggest problem, according to senior constable Dermott Forde – a bastion of the rugby matches. Most of Forde's working hours are spent combating it; he says synthetic cannabis has killed around 45 people already this year.

'It's evil, mate,' he says. 'It's a crusher of moral judgment and a crusher of families and a crusher of the community.'

Because synthetic cannabis is dirt cheap and easy to get, it's the drug of choice for the homeless. Where they cluster tends to be near where the drug's manufactured – another reason police initiated the rugby matches.

​Tatupu hopes monitoring the comings and goings of the bridge community will help police crush the nexus of New Lynn's synthetics industry. He saw the same trend in nearby Avondale two years ago: a sudden surge in rough sleepers, who dispersed after raids on four houses where the drug was being manufactured.

'You can generally find out where the synthetics are by following where the homeless are going,' he says.

AGONY AND ADDICTION

Sitting on the train tracks that cross over his bridge camp, 48-year-old Andrew talks about growing up fatherless, his almost two decades in jail, and the ten years he's since spent sleeping rough.

He's been addicted to synthetic cannabis since it first appeared on the market, and acknowledges the drug 'f…s people up'.

'You go into a dreamland,' he says. 'It can make you do stupid things – depends on your tolerance. I can handle it, so I sit there and watch the others mung out. When that happens, I talk to them. In a nice voice. You've got to get through to them so they'll listen.'

Andrew trusts his dealer, which he says is crucial 'because the wrong stuff can make you crazy'.

Sometimes he feels overwhelmed by his de facto dependants, he says. There are days he wants to do a runner – to be alone – but he feels he can't abandon them.

Before taking another toke of the communal bucket bong and heading back under the bridge, Andrew admits he should fix himself before trying to fix anybody else.

'That'd be getting off the synnies,' he says.

He has a seven-year-old daughter who loves horses, and he wants to spend more time with her. This is something – a purpose – Tatupu has cottoned onto, and is trying to use as an incentive to get Andrew away from the bridge. He believes that if Andrew transitions into housing, the others will follow suit.

'That would be a lot more effective than police preaching,' Tatupu says. 'They'll think 'if dad can do it, so can I'.'

COMMUNITY UNDER THE BRIDGE

But Andrew can't imagine leaving: he wants to 'live to a good old age then pass it on to one of the kids – so they can just carry on'.

For a homeless hangout, it's very civilised under the bridge. Carpets have been laid over a flattened stretch of dirt; there's a gas heater and a barbecue. The residents sleep on sofas piled with blankets to combat the winter chill. They think of the ducks and pukeko in the creek below as pets. They ignore the smell of human waste and worms wriggling up through the mats.

It's idyllic on a sunny day when everyone's sober. When Richard takes out his harmonica, the near-constant banter dies down so his haunting melodies can be heard.

The group are proud of Richard's musicianship, and he credits them with keeping him out of jail. He says he struggles to control his anger, but his 'bridge family' knows how to calm him down.

Richard was raised in state care and ran away a lot. He met Andrew on the street and was taken to the last bridge the crew slept under – down the road at Clark St.

'It was the first time I felt wanted,' he says. The council fenced off Clark St's bridge late last year, to stop people sleeping there. Most of the homeless migrated to Olympic Park, which they all agree would be hard to beat in terms of privacy and view.

'This place means everything to us,' says Richard.

On one of our visits, there's a young guy, thin with freckles and curly hair, sitting under the bridge with a pair of crutches. His name is Brody, and he's in his early twenties. Brody somehow made it along the slippery and steep track to the sofas; when he stands up, it's clear one of his legs is stuck at an odd angle. He says it's broken.

Asked whether it should be in a cast, he replies that proper medical treatment 'is a bit hard when you're homeless'. Brody started sleeping rough last year when the boarding house he'd been living in closed down. He says he had nowhere else to go.

BROKEN BONES AND FESTERING SORES

Persistent coughs and festering, scabby sores are de rigueur for the bridge dwellers. Andrew has a broken rib; if he can't get tramadol, he curls up in an armchair and moans. He refuses to go to a doctor. Synthetic cannabis is known to exacerbate mental health issues – which affect many homeless people – cause psychosis and a rapidly beating heart, and hinder breathing.

It's these health problems of homelessness that worry Salvation Army community outreach worker John Maeva most. He's known the Olympic Park crew since they lived under the Clark St bridge and had seen people die in their situation.

'I've lost six guys already from being sick and sleeping out in the cold. Six over the last nearly two years,' he says.

'These guys under the bridge, I can take them blankets, socks, and toiletries. But I can't get hold of medicines. I don't have an X-Ray machine. I go there and say, 'you need to go to hospital'. I tell them I can take them to hospital. But they just say no. What can you do?'

DEMOLISHED DREAMS AND NEW BEGINNINGS

Police dismantled the Olympic Park camp last week. They packed furniture into trucks and watched as the last remaining bridge dwellers grabbed guitars, framed photos and clothes – heading off to places unknown. Andrew was one of them.

​Tatupu says out of the twenty-five or so people who slept under the bridge when the rugby matches started, 10 were housed. That included a pregnant woman and a father staying there with his teenaged son. He believes this rate was much higher than it would have been without the engagement through sport. A few others were incarcerated; some went home to their families.

It would be naïve to think none of those people would fall back through the gaps, Tatupu says.

'It's like that saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink,' he says. 'As long as we're sure we've offered them the services … if they connect, they connect, if they don't – well, it's still entirely up to them in the end.'