Where can homeless people go?
Saturday, 8 November 2025
EDITORIAL: If you make the problem of the homeless disappear, where do they go? That was the most obvious question to emerge from reports that the Government is considering a ban on homelessness in our central cities. Yet the Government seemed unwilling to talk in much detail about it.
To be fair, homelessness is a terrible problem and a worsening one. Auckland and Wellington are the most affected cities. The approach to Auckland’s central library on Lorne St often looks like a refugee camp after a natural disaster and parts of Wellington are not much prettier. Other New Zealand centres have also been rendered both less safe and less visually appealing by the sight of rough sleepers on footpaths and in doorways.
Yet it is both sad and revealing that the proposed solution, which appears to be in the very early stages, did not emerge from a humanitarian perspective but within recommendations raised by the Ministerial Advisory Group for the Victims of Retail Crime. In other words, we are not talking about seeing homeless people as vulnerable individuals with a complex set of needs but as a nuisance scaring away potential shoppers.
Some will see that as dehumanising. Others will say camps of potentially violent and sometimes antisocial people are just one more problem for the already struggling retail sector in our largest cities.
A Homelessness Insights Report released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in July attached some numbers to the problem. The report said census data showed an ongoing trend of increased homelessness, from 4122 people living without shelter in 2013, down to 3624 people in 2018, and back up to 4965 in 2023.
According to media reports, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has confirmed that a move-on order, which would allow police to remove someone for a set period of time, is one of the advisory group’s recommendations but it has not yet been discussed at Cabinet or even circulated among coalition partners.
It was Auckland-based ACT leader David Seymour who responded with everyman commonsense when approached by the media.
“ I just ask the question: what happens next?” Seymour said. “Things have to be practical. They have to work. So if you ban homelessness, where do people actually go? And that’s why I said you’re better to actually build homes, engage community housing providers, get people a place to go. That’s what actually works.”
Youth development worker Aaron Hendry observed that the homeless gather in city centres for community and visibility. Moving them out of the way could make them feel less safe.
An earlier policy, to house people in motels, has been accurately described as a social disaster. That approach to emergency housing was introduced as a short-term solution in 2016, offering a week’s temporary accommodation, but families become stuck in crime-riddled situations.
The jump in homelessness from 2018 to 2023 was a 37% increase despite more than $1 billion being spent on the large-scale use of emergency housing. But those five years coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent cost of living crisis. By the end of 2023, there were nearly 3000 households in emergency housing and at its peak, the policy cost $1 million per day.
In their press release accompanying the Homelessness Insights Report, Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka said officials need to engage more with frontline providers such as the Auckland City Mission, the Wise Group and the Salvation Army, among others, “because they are the organisations working at the frontline of this problem”.
It is hard to argue with that. Bishop has said homelessness is a focus and 300 more Housing First places have been funded, enabling rough sleepers to get into their own homes. That is a start, at least.
It also seems policy changes are needed. Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson told the Sunday Star-Times the most effective long-term response was to offer immediate assistance with low to no barriers to housing. If someone needs a place to stay, they should get it after a few basic health questions are asked. But instead, access to emergency housing has been limited if people are deemed to have “contributed to their immediate emergency housing need”.
The Government’s rhetoric on homelessness also clashes with its cuts to Kāinga Ora.
Genuine help and compassion is required, not brutal responses or words such as “ban” that treat other human beings as a problem to be feared or ignored. Homelessness in our cities is a shared story of human failure. Both the Government and providers know there are ways to solve it but it will take significant investments and changes in priorities as well as solutions to complex mental health, addiction, education, employment and poverty issues.
It is far from easy but it cannot be impossible.