Homeless fear move-on orders will push them further to the margins

Monday, 10 November 2025

Homeless Hamiltonians say proposed new “move-on” laws will only make life on the streets harder and more dangerous.

At a St Vincent de Paul charity lunch in Hamilton, people sleeping rough reacted angrily to the government’s consideration of new powers allowing police to order someone to leave a public place for a period of time.

“If you try to wake me up in the middle of the night and try to move me on, I will fight you, I will scrap you out,” said Sapphire Mathews, who is currently living on the streets.

She said life without shelter already came with constant fear and insecurity. “It’s not safe,” she said, adding that being homeless made mental health struggles, drug use and run-ins with police almost inevitable.

Mathews said being single meant she was low on the list for social housing and that the women’s shelter was small and could not meet the need.

Another woman, Sonya Renae Harvey, said she tried to avoid confrontation. “I’m a peace-maker,” she said. “I’d probably move on if told to.”

Hamilton East MP Ryan Hamilton, whose private member’s bill proposes a framework for move-on orders, said the intention was not to target homeless people. The bill, still in the parliamentary ballot, would give police power to order people to move if they were causing or likely to cause distress or disorder.

“The intention of the bill was never to target homeless people,” Hamilton said. “This comes down to the discretion of the police and the community and not just targeting [the] homeless.”

He said the proposal had been developed with police input. “One of the main examples I was given was in Hamilton, for example, if someone's drunk and disorderly, the police can't really hold them, so they take them down to the cell for an hour and then they've got to let them go. Often they end up back in the nightclub or pub and get more intoxicated and then can cause a fight and the behaviour escalates.”

Hamilton said he was aware of the difficulties faced by those sleeping rough, having previously chaired Te Whare Korowai, formerly the Hamilton Christian Nightshelter.

But at St Vincent de Paul, there was little support for the plan. The organisation’s business and networking manager, Mike Rolton, said the idea raised serious concerns about where people were supposed to go if ordered to move on.

“They have a right to be in public spaces,” Rolton said. He said the charity tried to provide people with meaningful activity, including helping with food sorting and preparation.

St Vincent de Paul runs a donation-based lunch three times a week, attended by around 40 people, many of them homeless.

Rolton said boredom and lack of purpose were key issues. “They want something to do,” he said.

Hamilton Central Business Association general manager Vanessa Williams said she supported the concept of move-on orders as a way to reduce anti-social behaviour in the CBD.

“Move-on orders, as I understood it, were more around the anti-social behaviour, and we're very supportive of anything that improves the issue of anti-social behaviour, and contributes to making the central city a safer place to be for everybody,” she said.

She said anti-social behaviour in the city centre was not limited to those sleeping rough, though the issue had improved compared to earlier in the year.

For Mathews, however, the message was simple: being told to move on doesn’t solve the problem of having nowhere to go.