Blog: The Problem with Our Homelessness Intervention in Aotearoa

We understand that the current intervention model was created in response to a housing crisis, but just as previous supports were insufficient, this new system has similarly been overwhelmed by the volume of individuals requiring support for housing instability.

A serious overhaul is necessary to ensure that the needs of all individuals waiting in this Emergency and Transitional Housing space – more reasonably combined into an inter-Ministry collaborative Housing Instability Intervention System – are adequately and equitably met.

NZCCSS Kaitātari Kaupapa, Policy Advisor Rachel Mackay

Homelessness in New Zealand

Officially, in Aotearoa, you are technically homeless if you have no options for safe and secure housing. This can include being completely without shelter (often referred to as sleeping rough), being in temporary accommodation (such as couch-surfing or staying in motor camps or refuges), or if your permanent accommodation is so dilapidated that it is no longer safe or healthy to live there.

The government and social service sector has a history of supporting those who find themselves homeless in various ways, through running and funding emergency shelters, providing special needs grants, and running programmes to help people into accommodation.

Homelessness comes with not just physical dangers, but also social, emotional, and financial consequences for the individual. It is estimated that every person living in homelessness costs approximately $65,000 in services to combat these deprivations every year.

The demand for homelessness intervention escalated rapidly in the late 2000s and 2010s, to the point where between December 2015 and December 2016 the demand increased by a third.

In 2016, the Government introduced the Emergency Housing Special Needs Grant (EHSNG), delivered through the Ministry of Social Development, to tackle the growing rates of homelessness. The EHSNGs provided funds for individuals and families experiencing homelessness to pay for temporary accommodation when they had nowhere to stay in the next seven days. This got families out of cars and into beds in motels and backpackers across the country and was considered an important step in curbing the escalating problem.

This change also established the distinction between Emergency Housing (the 7-day period of the EHSNG) and Transitional Housing (the 12-week housing service provided by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development). At the time, there was clear delineation between the two, but this was soon to be blurred.

The Volume of Need

In September 2017, there were 5,844 clients on the Social Housing Register. As of December 2022, there were 23,127, a 293% increase. This included 3,348 households in Emergency Housing with the remainder being those living in both Transitional and Social Housing.

The client numbers on the Social Housing Register could be individuals, or they could be families. The way the data is reported by MSD does not tell us the average number of individuals per application, nor the number of children, but 345 of the Register clients in December 2022 were listed as requiring 5 or more bedrooms, compared to 111 in September 2017. Of the 23,127 applicants on the register in December 2022, 9,864 were either couples or single adults with children. In September 2017, there were 2,670.

This dramatic increase in volume has completely overwhelmed the homelessness intervention system. The media has been regaling us with tales of the overrun motels in South Auckland and Rotorua for years now, and while these articles illustrate some of the desperation of those living at the lower end of the Housing Continuum, they don’t help us understand how the system is crumbling.

The Blurring of Intent

As outlined in our previous article, Transitional Housing was intended to be a temporary home for clients, with wrap around service provision, to bridge the gap while they waited for Social Housing to become available. With funding and support from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, and normally facilitated by Community Housing Providers, they were intended to be homes as opposed to shelter and provide the clients living in them with the feeling of a home environment while they worked their way towards more permanent housing. The funding model for Emergency Housing was also designed in 7-day stints with the understanding that once approved for the social housing register, it would not take very long for a Transitional Housing placement to become available for the client, and they could begin their progression towards housing security.

Unfortunately, there are limited Transitional Housing providers in the country, and the housing stock at this stage is even more limited. The result is two-fold. Transitional Housing providers have been forced to begin engaging motel operators as more long-term options for keeping their growing client base housed. This means that some of their clients are living in motels while others are living in the more standard homes that had normally been the location for Transitional Housing. Both sets of clients are receiving an income related rent subsidy and wrap around services from their providers, but in vastly different settings.

It also meant that many clients simply cannot be moved from Emergency Housing to Transitional Housing settings due to provider saturation. This meant that there exists two distinct and separate cohort of clients, both still on the Housing Register, both living in motels for long periods of time, but one is Emergency Housing under the care of MSD, receiving no wrap around service provision or support, while the other is Transitional Housing under the care of HUD and CHPs, and therefore does.

The most recent information regarding duration of EHSNGs was published by MSD in December 2022, and it showed that there were 69 applicants who had been receiving these grants for longer than 24 months. While HUD has removed their average duration of tenure in Transitional Housing from their dashboard, the median days to house an applicant on the Housing Register in February 2023 was 194 – over 6 months. Not only are these two categories existing within the same locations in many cases, but their timeframes overlap so significantly that it fundamentally blurs the intent between the two steps on the housing continuum – even more so when a client can be moved directly from Emergency Housing into Social Housing without the need to move through a Transitional Housing provider if they are the best suited client for the property that becomes available.

The Provider Disparity

As mentioned, these two categories fundamentally differ from a funding and Ministerial Management perspective. Emergency Housing is funded and managed by the Ministry of Social Development, while Transitional Housing is funded and managed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

There is also a fundamental difference in the ways that clients engage with their providers to remain in their housing. Emergency housing clients must reapply for their EHSNGs on a 21-day cycle, by attending meetings with their case manager – usually at an MSD branch – and be reassessed for need. There is the chance that their EHSNG may be declined, and that they will have to pay for their motel accommodation themselves or be moved back into housing insecurity if they cannot afford it. In addition, these clients receive no access to any wrap around support services, as these services are not part of the Emergency Housing package. Conversely, not only are Transitional Housing clients provided these services – at no additional cost to the individual, as both Emergency Housing and Transitional Housing clients are on Income Related Rent Subsidy so pay the same proportion of their income to housing – but as clients of HUD their Transitional Housing providers come to them to provide these services, and automatically renew their eligibility for Transitional Housing if they have not been transferred to social housing at the end of their funding period. These two heavily disparate levels of support and stress exist possibly within the same motel, or at motels in the same street, simply based on which step of the Housing Continuum the client has been allocated to.

Client Protections and the lack thereof

In late 2022, HUD engaged advocates in a consultation around the creation of a Code of Practice for providers in the Transitional Housing space. Both Emergency and Transitional Housing clients are specifically excluded from the protections of the Residential Tenancies Act, but due to the volume of clients and extended period that clients were staying in Transitional Housing it was determined that there needed to be some form of regulation.

This Code would outline the responsibilities and rights of clients, providers and motel operators regarding payments, repairs, exiting processes and many other facets that have not been regulated until now. It has been viewed by the majority of those in the space as an excellent step to ensuring that those living in these conditions are afforded the rights and respect that they need. However, this Code specifically excludes those who are in Emergency Housing from its protections. Again, individuals who are living in the same motel complex, or motels in the same town, will be living with drastically different conditions. We have received stories from our membership and read in the media about Emergency Housing clients evicted from their only form of stable and secure accommodation when their kids have used the motel pool at the wrong time – there is no form of protection for these extremely vulnerable clients under the current and upcoming settings.

Unfit for Purpose

We feel these examples illustrate that the current model of Emergency and Transitional Housing is fundamentally unfit to support those currently living with the threat of homelessness and housing instability. The arbitrary line in funding between the two categories is creating a chasm of inequality between those designated Emergency and Transitional, while doing nothing to support the progression along the continuum to housing stability for any of these individuals on the Housing Register.

We understand that the current model was created in response to a housing crisis, but just as previous supports were insufficient, this new system has similarly been overwhelmed by the volume of individuals requiring support for housing instability.