Plan to charge for emergency housing back on

Tuesday, 22 September 2020

There's a shortage of social and transitional housing.

A Government plan to charge people for emergency housing like motels was derailed by Covid-19, but will now come into effect two days after the election.

For most of us, the biggest event of the last two years was Covid-19, but for one South Auckland family it was a home renovation.

A family of seven (two adults and five children) have lived beside rodents, been shunted to different corners of Auckland, and had their belongings flooded out in a garage they used for storage - after their landlord of five years decided to renovate the property they lived in.

Mary* spends her days looking for houses, making applications for rentals, getting rejected then taking those seven-eight applications in to Work and Income at the end of the week - where she waits in line for three hours - so she can prove she hasn't been able to find a house.

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'Most of the time I'm stressing out here trying to deal with housing every week. Reporting and following everything they tell me to do to keep us here for my boys to have a roof.

'I don't know how to do this … I don't sleep at night. Even if I'm tired. I can sleep for three hours and I wake up and I feel like tired, but I just won't sleep.

'They told me different ways how to help with my sleeping and I've tried it, but it doesn't work.'

The Government may have paid $6000 a fortnight to house them in a private rental at one stage - part of a scheme to pay landlords motel-level room rates to put families in houses rather than motels.

When the scheme ended abruptly they had to shift all of their belongings overnight into a friend's garage and eventually ended up in a Mangere motel - where they live today.

Now the Labour-led government is pushing ahead with a plan to charge families like hers 25 per cent of their income for staying in these emergency motels.

The change was announced in February, set to come into place in March, but was delayed due to Covid-19.

Now it will come into effect on October 19 - two days after the election.

The Government argues it is a question of fairness along with a much-needed incentive to get people out of emergency housing and into private, transitional or social housing.

Mangere East Family Services social worker Alastair Russell said it's not a question of incentives. The reason people aren't moving out of emergency housing is because the whole system is 'stuck'.

The backlog of people waiting for social housing spaces has meant people stay in transitional housing longer.

The backlog of people in transitional housing has meant people can't move out of emergency accommodation.

Mary is waiting for a transitional housing space to open up and wants to move into a house, but has no choice but to stay put in the motels the Government have put them in.

'I go, every week, and sit there and wait for hours to do my reports [to WINZ] so I could have a place extended for my family to live in … if I had places to go [and live] I would just go,' Mary said.

'To get a private [rental] and then to support ourselves at home my budget adviser said it could be another $800-$1000.

'It's so impossible for us to look for a house apart from social housing. Living in an emergency house is the best I could try to do for my family to put a roof over our head for the meantime.'

The renovation that started it all

Mary's husband has a landscaping job with Auckland Council. For five years they lived in Mangere and were able to make rent payments relatively comfortably until August of last year when their landlord told them he wanted to renovate the house.

The family had to leave by September 25.

'As soon as we got the letter I went into Work and Income … I keep ringing and asking if there's anything they can help us with because if not we gonna be homeless.'

Rental prices in the wider market had soared beyond what the family could afford so they sought help - and got it - from Work and Income NZ (WINZ), which eventually put them into emergency accommodation in the South Auckland suburb of Papatoetoe.

They moved into a two-storey private house with another family as part of a scheme that saw motel room rates paid for each room of a private house.

These were houses a Newsroom investigation revealed the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) rented for up to $3000 per week per family with few checks as to their quality.

Cold with rodents

For privacy the two families split the entrances of the house. The family on the ground floor would enter through sliding double-doors while Mary's would enter through the main entrance and go up the stairs.

The family downstairs shut the door nearest Mary's entrance and wedged a bit of rubber underneath it to block out the noise of people entering so both families could pretend they were living in separate houses.

As a house it was filled with mice - and cold.

'We were in the kitchen and we were just about to do our family prayer and then we see the mice coming up from the cupboard in the kitchen and goes into the bathroom.

'The windows wouldn't close properly … even under the doors; when it's windy the wind can blow the leaves into the house underneath the door.

'So what my husband did when we were there we use the towels and we roll it up and cover both the front door and the back door to keep the house warm.'

They also crowded into one room and left a set of small heaters running to keep them warm.

'If we stay in one room and keep the heater there then that room will be warm, but the rest of the house is cold - like freezing cold.'

A new house, but…

After two weeks she was shifted out of there to a better house on a nicer section that even had a garage to go with it.

Except the house was so far to the south of Auckland her young children needed to take a taxi so they could get to a bus stop to make a much longer commute to school.

MSD staff encouraged Mary to register her children at a school in their new area, but she didn't want to switch schools and have to switch to another a week later if MSD decided to move them somewhere else.

'I told them. I can't risk moving my kids from school because I don't know how long I'm going to be at the emergency place.

'And if I move that means I have to move my kids again. So I'd rather have my kids stay in one school.'

Even after catching a taxi to the bus stop the young children would needed to hop onto a bus service that required them to switch buses three times.

'I tried that with them and they kept getting lost.'

Mary gave up after her kids caught the wrong bus somewhere along the way and turned up at the Manukau Institute of Technology (a landmark they recognised) looking for a way to get home.

The alternative was to get her niece to drive over from West Auckland to their house in Mangere (South Auckland) to take the kids to school in another suburb - a total trip time for her niece of almost one hour and 20 minutes.

Her niece wasn't able to make the trip very often during the nearly nine months they were at the house.

'My kids was off-school most of the time. We got called in for a meeting at school and I did my best to try to explain to them the reason why my kids couldn't come to school.'

Moving out

She was never told the use of private rentals for emergency accommodation (like the one she was in) was coming to an end.

Landlords had taken rental homes off the rental market in poorer areas and funnelled them into the much more lucrative emergency housing market.

The Government was keen to put a stop to this because it was allegedly worsening the housing shortage in poorer areas.

Mary's family had to scramble to move all of their things out of the house after receiving a call at 10am on July 1 informing them the scheme had ended.

'They told me that Harcourts should have asked us to move from the property months ago. And that's when I was shocked because I never got a letter or an email or anything.

Later on in the afternoon (2pm) they were told they would need to move to the Auckland CBD next to the Sky Tower and get there by 5pm or they wouldn't be able to get into their new place.

'She said 'No you have to go in today and check-in today to the place. You have to check-in before 5pm'.

'We left everything and we went to the city - which got us stuck in the traffic for an hour and a half - by the time we got there it was nearly 5pm. Signed the form, and then we came [back] again.

'We did all the moving that night.'

They managed to source a truck while another friend lent their garage as a storage space for the extra belongings - which couldn't be squeezed into the two hotel rooms they'd been given.

Most of their belongings would end up completely waterlogged and had to be taken out to the dump - except for a set of drawers and a microwave.

'He [our friend] told us. You know if it rains the water can go into the side of the garage, but we told them 'It's OK … there's nowhere else we can leave our stuff'.

'We try our best to move our stuff as far as it could go right to the one side that the water doesn't really reach, but yeah it couldn't really save much.'

MSD is encouraging people to come to them if they can't afford the new charge.

Their Auckland CBD stop was just a brief week-long one before they were allocated the motel they're now in - the Auckland Gold Star Motel - which, thankfully, brought them right back to the suburb where they started.

'It was like a relief when they mentioned the word Mangere. It was like a wind just blown away from me… they said 'Mangere' and I said 'Oh my gosh'.

'If it's here in Mangere my kids can still go to school. They can walk.

'And they said it's another motel.'

A new waitlist

The Government does not hold much data on how many families are in a similar position.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said it had a social housing register, but no data tracking the number of people waiting for transitional housing places.

Minister of Social Development Carmel Sepuloni said an earlier plan to levy a charge had been delayed by Covid-19.

'There is no separate register for transitional housing.

'People in need of transitional housing are referred to housing providers by the Ministry of Social Development. If they are eligible for public housing, they are encouraged to apply and are then added the public housing register.'

Social welfare Minister Carmel Sepuloni said the Government had increased the number of transitional housing places available 'significantly' from 1718 in November 2017 to 3474 by the end of July 2020 (a rate of approximately 658 new places a year).

'The Emergency Housing Contribution has been signalled for some time. The Government announced it in February, but the March 30 start date was delayed because of the nationwide Covid-19 response.

'With the changes, most people would not be expected to pay for their first seven nights in emergency housing, giving them some time to look for other housing and get other support they may need.'

Both major parties support the policy of getting families to pay 25 per cent of their income to stay in emergency housing.

In its last year in office National ramped up its provision of transitional housing places.

Between the end of March 2017 and July 2017 it delivered 386 transitional housing places - a rate of 914 per year - and had promised to create 2158 new transitional housing places by the end of 2017.

National Party housing spokesman Simon O'Connor said the party did have doubts about the timing of this policy to charge income-related rents to people in emergency housing.

'Whether it's the right thing to be doing now? We do have some reservation … you're charging people when they've got no other option. They are still in emergency.'

Adding to the problem was a lack of data about just how much demand was out there for transitional housing versus the supply of it.

'How many people are in emergency houses? How many people are waiting for transitional housing? How many spaces are available? A lot of these things are not abundantly clear,' O'Connor said.

'I've been frustrated … because you are trying to get a handle on a scale and often being told that in effect it's held on individual files and therefore it'd be rather difficult to get into it.

'In principle [National agrees with a 25 percent charge], but exactly when it would kick in. How much. And even just the nature of how dire things are - we'd all need to weigh up. Although with the latter: it's pretty bad.'

Ministry of Social Development general manager of housing Karen Hocking said there were many families with high needs and complex situations waiting for public housing thanks to the housing shortage.

'The growing demand for emergency housing reflects the lack of affordable housing supply in Auckland and across the country.

'While other agencies are working to address this shortage, MSD’s role is to ensure that people with no other option are supported into emergency housing, usually in motels.'

MSD was working with Mary's family to find her, her husband and five children a four-bedroom house they could live in, but the supply of housing was tight.

As for the policy to charge families for emergency accommodation she encouraged people to talk to MSD if they were unable to afford the charge.

'For those who’ve been living in emergency housing and paying no costs for a while, we understand this will be a big change.

'Our case managers will be talking and working with clients to support them with the change.'

Mangere East Family Services social worker Alastair Russell said a family like Mary's could expect to wait six months for a transitional housing place because there simply weren't enough places available.

'The whole system is stuck. All these transitional housing providers tell the people moving in their stay is for 13 weeks and they'll help them move on.

'That 13 weeks becomes six months, becomes a year.

'The whole system is broken.'

*Newsroom has decided not to publish this individual's real name