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Jane Henderson, manager of Community House Motueka, says while some homeless people will say they live that way by choice, most carry trauma from their childhoods.
With two backpackers and a campground that have since been converted into workers’ accomodation, attempting to find a home in Motueka is “hugely stressful”, a community advocate says.
Motueka’s Community House manager Jane Henderson said housing in Motueka was expensive, difficult to find, and there simply wasn’t enough of it.
Amongst Motueka’s homeless were women with young children living in cars, people in campervans or substandard caravans, under a bridge, on in tents or other shelters “tucked away in other little corners”.
Some, Henderson said, had to leave their accomodation because their landlords wanted to list it on Airbnb, or needed it for orchard workers’ accomodation.
“It’s actually spreading through more sectors than it was before,” Henderson said.
“We’re seeing families in here that we have never seen before who are accessing our services. There are a lot more families who are struggling, that before had managed but now they’re not.”
Braden Fastier/Stuff
“Landlords wanted” sign in Motueka.
One of the drop in centre’s regulars lives under a bridge and had been on the housing register for over a year. It would cost him “thousands” to set himself up in a house. Many of those without a roof have complex issues, with alcohol, drugs, family violence, and mental health, and wouldn’t be able to hold down a tennacy without support.
Henderson said it was a “frustrating” and “stressful” space to work.
There was no simple fix, but she would like others to have compassion and empathy for those who had nowhere to turn.
“Some of the guys will tell you that they choose to live like this, because they like the fact that they’ve got no responsibilities,” she said.
“But actually underneath it all, when you unpack it, there’s stuff that happened that they are not able to face up to. A lot of it’s childhood trauma.”
New government policy may not help the situation, she believed.
National’s coalition agreement with ACT states that the parties will restore mortgage interest deductibility for rental properties with a 60 per cent deduction in 2023/24, 80 per cent in 2024/25, and 100 per cent in 2025/26.
This may just “give them the ability to fancy up the houses a wee bit and charge more rent”, Henderson said.
“There may be a certain sector that will benefit from that, but I don’t believe the people we are talking about will.”
The ACT and National coalition agreement will also allow landlords to issue a 90 day notice to a tenant to end a periodic tenancy “without providing a reason or applying to the Tenancy Tribunal”.
Henderson said that would likely impact “fairly negatively” on Motueka’s most marginalised.
“The bottom line is there are just not enough affordable houses for the number of people we have got.”
