Homeless in New Zealand: How we reached ‘crisis’ point

Sunday, 3 August 2025

A Wellington family’s council flat was so bad it was making their child sick with breathing problems. A doctor told them to find a new house immediately.

New to navigating the housing system, the family turned to the Ministry of Social Development earlier this year asking for help and emergency housing, but were turned away because they were deemed to have “contributed to their own homelessness”.

They had to stay on a friend’s floor before a Salvation Army social worker helped advocate for the family to move into transitional housing.

MSD couldn’t comment on the case without specifics but says emergency housing is a last resort and if an applicant is eligible for another form, they should be referred to that.

But the Salvation Army say the family weren’t referred, just rejected, and use this as an example of how blunt the system has become.

A slew of recent reports have all concluded the same thing: homelessness is rising across the country. Nowhere is it in decline and there are no signs it will slow down.

One in every 1000 Kiwis is sleeping without shelter and 14 in every 100 live in housing considered uninhabitable. At least 57,000 women are experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping is happening in affluent areas previously unaffected, like Auckland’s North Shore. Māori wardens have reported helping a family with two kids staying in Glenfield Mall’s carpark.

Numerous organisations are now saying we have a homelessness crisis and are urging the Government to act and to change its policies.

“The tap is not being turned off and prevention is not occurring and we have a current state where the current policies are putting people onto the street. That’s the crisis,” says Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson.

This week she implored Auckland Council to advocate for its homeless constituents and to put pressure on central government. She is in no doubt that changes made last year to make it tougher to get into emergency housing are to blame.

“That is directly growing homelessness and street homelessness; that real suffering, that real hard end of homelessness.”

Robinson told the Star-Times all the evidence pointed to the most effective response long term was immediate assistance with low to no barriers to housing. If someone needed somewhere to stay, they should get it with just a few basic health questions asked.

Once someone has had a sleep and a shower they are much more able to explain their circumstances and needs.

Instead, this week the Salvation Army reported declines for emergency housing on the basis people had “contributed to their own need” have increased by 386% since entry was tightened. MSD disputes this number.

Charity workers have alleged the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is, increasingly, refusing emergency housing applications from people attempting to escape domestic violence. MSD denies this and says anyone leaving a violent household is not contributing to their own homelessness.

Kāhui Tū Kaha tumu whakarae [chief] Barbara Browne says every day they help a woman escaping violence, though it’s not clear if they attempted to get emergency housing. But the hours MSD keeps are a barrier.

“Government will say there’s always emergency access. We’ve always said to them emergency access isn’t just office hours. That’s hopeless.

“If there’s family violence and the male party holds the tenancy and the police deem it necessary that they are separated, then what happens at midnight to the women and the children? Because it’s not automatic they can get into refuge.”

This week the Auckland not-for-profit organisation helped a family with an asthmatic 6-year-old who’d been sleeping in their car for six months.

“All we know is the person tried to get emergency accommodation and couldn’t,” says Browne.

“We housed another person who was a hospital referral. She was living in her car and her child was receiving treatment for cancer.”

They’re increasingly helping the young and old; some in their 70s whose spouses have died so they no longer can afford rent or their pensions aren’t covering their bills and the young, some just 12-years-old, who have run away from violent homes.

Aaron Hendy is a rangatahi advocate and he too has seen an increase in the number of young people living in cars or on the street. There’s been several 11-year-olds, the youngest was 9.

Most often, they’re teenagers.

“Prior to the Government's policy change around emergency accommodation we very rarely had to leave a young person on the street, we were able to advocate to MSD to get a solution,” says Hendy.

Every frontline outreach or housing provider the Sunday Star-Times spoke to said the same thing: restricted access to emergency housing is forcing more people to live on the street.

“There’s too many people saying it for it to be incorrect,” says Hendy.

Emergency housing grants were introduced in 2016 when the previous National government was under pressure to address homelessness and families living in cars. They were intended to fund up to seven nights’ temporary accommodation in motels while alternative housing was arranged.

But with affordable and appropriate housing in short supply, frontline staff struggled to find housing in time and people remained in motels for longer.

Emergency housing and the use of motels then skyrocketed during the pandemic and by 2022 it was costing taxpayers up to $1m a day. For many families, it became a long-term option despite many motels being unhealthy, unsafe and crime-ridden.

By the end of 2023, almost 3000 households were in emergency housing, including 1512 families with 3185 children.

“The large-scale use of emergency housing was one of the biggest public policy failures in New Zealand history,” Housing Minister Chris Bishop has said.

The new government’s target is to reduce reliance on emergency housing and have no children living in motels. It introduced a Priority One category that moved families with dependent children who’ve been in emergency housing for longer than 12 weeks to move to the top of the social housing waitlist. That’s seen 1000 families with more than 2100 children moved into stable, secure housing.

But the Government has also made it much tougher to access emergency housing by increasing scrutiny of whether people seeking housing have “contributed to their immediate emergency housing need”.

Examples include leaving their existing accommodation without organising a new place and having to leave because they intentionally damaged the property or engaged in anti-social activity like theft or violence.

Before ministers made the change, officials at MSD warned ministers taking this step ahead of significant increases to affordable housing and more wrap-around support risked increasing the number of Kiwis living on the street, in cars or in overcrowded houses.

At the time Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka said the risks had been mitigated and ministers denied the change would mean more rough sleeping. In January the Government celebrated achieving its target to reduce the number of households in emergency housing motels by 75% five years early. It gave it an extra $1b in this year’s Budget.

In December, ministers received a report which said Hamilton, Wellington and Auckland had all seen an increase in rough sleeping. As well, councils and organisations were reporting publicly they were seeing a rise.

In March, Bishop denied his policies had contributed to any rise in homelessness - or that there had even been an increase.

“There is basically no agreed definition of what homelessness is,” he told Q&A.

The evidence could no longer be disputed last week. The Government was forced to admit the increase when it released its latest Homelessness Insights Register which said councils across the country were reporting increases in people and families rough sleeping, living in cars, garages, overcrowded or uninhabitable conditions and couch surfing.

“Accurate numbers are difficult to pin down - people without shelter often move around and may avoid engaging with government services - but it’s clear we have a real problem,” Bishop and Potaka both said in a statement.

“The Government takes this seriously.”

Every organisation spoken to by the Star-Times expressed relief that ministers had finally acknowledged there was a problem, but now want them to act and change their policies.

And they were comfortable the previous emergency motel model was being closed down.

“But we just don’t think they’ve been replaced with any adequacy,” said Browne.

There simply was not enough immediate access to housing and everyone needed to realise that it’s better for the community if people had homes, she said.

Kāhui Tū Kaha recently helped a chronically homeless man who had broken his ankle running away from a robbery. The risk of him reoffending was reduced if he was housed, says Browne.

“The numbers and the complexity of what’s happening is getting more difficult and to that extent it becomes a societal problem that can’t be ignored. We don’t want to be a society that has children, has sick people, has old people homeless.

“I’m sure we don’t want to be that society.”

New Zealand still has a massive housing shortage coupled with rising rent and families struggling to afford the basics, like food and power. There’s about 20,000 households on the state house waiting list. Kāinga Ora has been refocused by Bishop from building state houses to managing them; its stock will remain at about 78,000 homes.

Kāinga Ora cancelled 3500 planned new houses. Instead the Government is opting to power up community housing providers and says it has funded more than 2000 new social homes built and maintained by charities.

Potaka said homelessness was a concern, but it wasn’t just about housing. The causes and required solutions were very complex, he said.

More than $550m a year was spent across multiple support services and agencies.

“An emergency motel should only ever be seen as a last resort when better housing with better support isn’t available.

“The most common reason an emergency motel application is declined is because the person’s housing need can be met in a better way, for example with transitional housing.”

The Government has also requested advice on further targeted interventions for rough sleepers and how to better utilise current programmes and instructed officials to consult with frontline services.

“Our long-term focus is on fixing the fundamentals of our housing market: freeing up land, removing planning barriers, improving infrastructure funding, and giving councils stronger incentives to support housing growth.”

Labour’s housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty accused the Government of being too focused on saving money.

“Nothing is going to touch the sides when at the end of the day the number of houses, actual houses that need to be built, are growing because this government has stopped all momentum around the social house build.

“There’s no other long term solution to homelessness other than actually building houses.”

McAnulty said Potaka was refusing to listen to the frontline providers who were telling him emergency housing wasn’t accessible to all who needed it and his policy changes had made homelessness worse.

“The man is easily the most arrogant bloke I’ve ever met in my life,” he said.

“I don’t make that claim lightly.”

Robinson says limiting emergency housing without providing an alternative and assuming people had people to stay with fundamentally misunderstands the circumstances people are in.

They are usually unwell - physically, mentally - and have exhausted every opportunity for shelter.

Robinson says the situation is a crisis because there are so many people severely housing deprived and the pipeline of need hasn’t been turned off because there is not enough affordable housing.

“All we’re doing at the moment is growing the future clientele of the mission and that’s deep suffering.”

The average age of death at the Auckland City Mission is 55 and every year at Matariki the mission gathers to read the names of everyone they’ve lost. It’s usually between 20-30 people.

“People who’ve died too young. They’ve died of poverty and they’ve died of homelessness,” says Robinson.

“Homelessness literally kills.”

Have you been unfairly declined emergency housing or have a news tip? Email amelia.wade@stuff.co.nz