Nightshelter in the storm: Lack of support has helpers of Hamilton's homeless in despair

Thursday, 15 May 2025

Te Whare Korowai Taangata o Kirikiriroa chairman Tim Macindoe and kaiwhakahaere matua Joanne Turner say they are expected to be a backstop and ‘it’s like nobody wants to know’.

There’s an agitated man hanging around the outside of the Hamilton Men’s Nightshelter who apparently has two knives in his hands.

He’s just been released from prison. He doesn’t have the medication he is supposed to have. He’s shouting at the homeless people trying to make camp on the doorstep of the building. He’s shouting at himself.

The police are called, and the building is put into lockdown. Two police cars swiftly arrive, and he is taken to the police station. While it is not known for sure if he had the knives, a witness tells the nightshelter’s staff he saw two big ones.

The next day he is back, and is again menacing the other homeless people gathered outside. The police are called again. An hour later they arrive and escort the angry man to the other side of the road, and he wanders off.

“He still keeps hanging around,” says Joanne Turner, the chief executive of Te Whare Korowai Taangata o Kirikiriroa - the Hamilton Christian Nightshelter Trust.

Their ubiquitous shopping trolleys carting all their worldly possessions, homeless people are becoming an increasing presence on the streets of Hamilton.

The incident, which took place on April 3, is just another small chapter in an increasingly dark story for Hamilton’s nightshelters.

It’s a tale of guests who are being preyed upon by criminals, staff who are overwhelmed and stressed, a lack of beds, unsupportive government agencies, and an uncaring - or simply unaware - public.

The nightshelters are increasingly becoming the metaphorical ambulance at the bottom of the cliff for the city’s most vulnerable residents.

And it’s an ambulance that now needs its own ambulance.

“Most nights we will have seven to nine people sleeping under that nook [out the front of the men’s nightshelter building on Anglesea St].

“They are people with varying degrees of issues. The government departments that would normally help us with dealing with them aren’t.

“Some of them have just been released from prison. Some of them have just been released from the [Waikato Hospital mental health unit] Henry Bennett Centre, often with no or little medication or even a GP.

“And they are simply dropped off or make their way here. And because we are full to capacity, they just end up sleeping on our doorstep.”

This Anglesea St building was was being eyed as a part of a ‘hub’ to help address homelessness but the Ministry of Social Development has rejected such proposals.

Many of the homeless people are suffering from poor mental health, trauma and addiction issues - and are now often confronted by other streeties who are volatile, psychotic, and/or dangerous.

“There’s a huge and growing need for residential services. That’s part of the problem, but there are systemic issues as well. For example rehabilitative services can’t take people of no fixed abode - because they need somewhere to release them to after they have been rehabilitated.”

The one initiative that could have possibly made a dent in the problem - a central “hub” of facilities in Anglesea St to provide over-arching assistance for the city’s homeless population - proposed by Turner and others was rejected outright last week by the Ministry of Social Development.

Turner’s concerns are echoed by trust chairman Tim Macindoe, who succeeded Hamilton East MP Ryan Hamilton in the role.

The devastating Loafers Lodge fire in Wellington, in which several people lost their lives, raised the neglect of homeless people as a nationwide issue.

“We are deeply concerned as a trust for the public’s safety and the safety of the staff. Many of our guests are very, very vulnerable people who have nowhere else to go.

“We are operating increasingly in a vacuum. The police … expect us to be a backstop. They and others are sending people here with no support structures around them.”

The trust manages 88 “accommodation spaces”. Seventeen at the Men’s Shelter building in Anglesea St, 27 at facilities in Hill St, and the rest “in outlying areas and in transitional housing”.

Turner has plenty of horror stories. The man with two knives is one. Another is one of the guests, a woman in her 50s who had been diagnosed with early onset dementia.

“We are having to evict her. We don’t want to, but there are some serious safety issues. She keeps taking the smoke alarms out, and … there are concerns about her leaving the stove on and that sort of thing. It’s a risk we just don’t have the capacity to manage.”

‘Many of our guests are very, very vulnerable people who have nowhere else to go,’ trust chairman Tim Macindoe says (file photo).

Adds Macindoe: “I’m always mindful of the Loafer’s Lodge fire, and whether we have learned the lessons from that.”

The deliberately-lit fire that killed five people in May 2023 gutted the 92-bed accommodation facility, and - for a time, at least - put issues of the vulnerability of the homeless population in the spotlight.

Then there is the man who, on Monday afternoon, began lurking around one of the suburban residential homes in a bid to meet with someone staying there, who in a possible bid to attract attention, began telling people he had a gun.

“The police came and escorted him away. He just came back 10 minutes later and kicked the door in.”

The trust is part of a CBD inter-agency group set up by the police last year, involving the Hamilton City Council and other entities, which aims to troubleshoot and combat issues as they arise.

The group is due to hold its next meeting at the Salvation Army on May 26, with Hamilton MPs Tama Potaka and Ryan Hamilton in attendance.

Turner hopes that event might be the turning point, where her call for help is finally heard.

“Right now, it’s like nobody wants to know. It’s almost an eyes wide shut mentality.”

So how did the situation get so dire, and who is to blame?

‘There are solutions to the problem... but there’s no commitment,’ Te Whare Korowai Taangata o Kirikiriroa kaiwhakahaere matua Joanne Turner says.

Macindoe - who is standing for the Hamilton mayoralty - is reluctant to point the finger at his former National party colleagues who are now in the current government.

“My role is to support Joanne. I hope our MPs will be part of the solution. I’m not looking to gain any electoral advantage. I’m not here to take pot shots … but it’s very frustrating.”

Turner is a little less shy - but chooses her words carefully.

“There has been a chronic under-investment in vulnerable people … We have got to get these agencies back to the table. Everyone needs to be part of the solution.

“It’s mind-boggling to us that there are solutions to the problem, like the hub - but there’s no commitment.”

Homeless people themselves are not the problem - they are the result of the problem, she said.

“What I see and deal with every day is not the New Zealand I know. It’s not the New Zealand I grew up in.”

Turner said she was not calling for a return to the days when mentally unwell or neuro-divergent people were shut away in institutions, out of sight and out of mind.

“We need a resurgence in people who in times gone by would have looked after and cared for these people.

“Right now, there’s simply not enough people teaching them the skills to survive and navigate life. There’s not enough rehabilitation.”

In response to Waikato Times inquiries, Hamilton city area commander Inspector Andrea McBeth issued a short statement.

“Police’s role is to ensure that people in our city are safe and feel safe, and there is a lot of inter-agency work that police supports to help do this.

“Officers will refer individuals to relevant support services when a need is identified.

“It is not for police to specifically comment on homelessness as an issue.”