A recent Radio New Zealand report linking new emergency housing rules to increased homelessness in Auckland is neither a surprise, nor just a big city problem.
The coalition government made no secret of how they saw the role of the state shifting in how it houses its most vulnerable citizens. Public housing solutions were to be left up to communities.
Their focus was on ending the use of emergency housing, increasingly characterised by the long-term rental of motels. Which would be welcome, so long as it came with a plan to shrink the need for those beds in the first place.
Unfortunately, as outlined to RNZ by those on the frontlines in Tāmaki Makaurau, that is not what we are seeing. Emergency housing numbers are declining, at least in part, because access is being restricted.
Women escaping domestic violence situations are now forced to choose between accepting emergency housing, and losing their benefit for three months, or staying with their abuser. Truly inhumane. We have seen similar results under previous governments, who managed to oversee reductions in the waiting list for state housing simply by not letting people join it.
It is important to put this issue into the wider context of government policy direction. We have ve also seen changes made to the Residential Tenancies Act, including the return of "no cause evictions", that will directly result in more people experiencing homelessness.
The new build programme of Kainga Ora has been put on ice, with vacant lots across Dunedin where affordable rentals once stood (with more planned to stand alongside them).
The income-related rents subsidy lets community housing providers (CHPs) earn market rents from their units, while only charging their tenants a percentage of their income.
Access to this government funding, which gave CHPs the support they needed to step up and fill some of the gaps, has been slashed. It is now practically non-existent for new rentals south of Christchurch.
Locally, the Dunedin City Council has effectively ended its programme of building more community housing for older people, citing increasing costs.
Which is not to say there are not good things going on locally. The council’s housing action plan rightly puts equity of outcomes at the centre of its work. Priority is given to those at the pointiest end of housing need.
They are also leading work across the city to better understand the complexities of our whānau experiencing homelessness, so that we can work more effectively to reduce their number.
If local councils do not have the capacity to build the houses we know we need there are still tools at their disposal.
Any of their surplus land, in residentially zoned areas, could be made available for the purposes of affordable housing.
They could follow the lead of the Christchurch City Council and waive all development contributions for new social housing or papakainga developments. We have seen with the recent office conversion by Ōtepoti Dunedin Whānau Refuge how perverse that system can be. Funders and philanthropists could recognise the importance of this work by adequately resourcing groups working to address both the causes and the symptoms of housing insecurity.
One of the things we have heard from the community sector is that assistance with professional services — feasibility work, resource consent planning, quantity surveying — would be incredibly helpful in trying to get smaller scale projects off the ground or ready for investment.
After 40 years of failure, we know that the market is not going to come in and ride to our rescue. Nor can our communities afford to sit at the mercy of shifting government priorities.
That said, it is also important not to let the government off the hook altogether. Kainga Ora has consent to build 41 new homes in a perfect spot in Carroll St, for example, and we should absolutely advocate for that project to be built rather than land banked.
If we believe in the fundamental human right to shelter, we need to be doing what we can locally to help make that a reality.
The opportunity now stands before us all to be a part of the solution.
■Aaron Hawkins is the leader of the Otago Housing Alliance and a former mayor of Dunedin.
