State of Emergency in Housing Should Be Declared: Twyford

The Government should declare a state of emergency to deal immediately with the housing crisis, according to Labour’s housing spokesperson Phil Twyford.

“The latest independent research from Otago University says that there are about 41,000 New Zealanders who are homeless,” Mr Twyford told Q+A’s Jessica Mutch. “That includes people that are living in campgrounds, entire families squashed into the single room of a shared house. And this is a social crisis.”

Mr Twyford was responding to a story by One News political reporter Katie Bradford, looking a growing homelessness problem in the tourism hotspot of Taupo, as well as international news reports about New Zealand homelessness in the likes of The Guardian and Al Jazeera.

But Mr Twyford said it’s not about how the world sees New Zealand, but about immediate action.

“Look, there are a whole lot of ideas floating round. Someone’s proposed the old Mt Eden Prison be used. Someone else suggested a cruise ship. Paul Bennett’s talking about pod housing. Look, my message to the government is I don’t care how you do it; just do it.”

“Put a roof over the heads of these people.”

END





Q + A
Episode 25
PHIL TWYFORD
Interviewed by Jessica Mutch

JESSICA So, Renee Grey ending that report by Katie Bradford. To discuss this issue, Labour’s housing spokesperson, Phil Twyford, joins me now. I want to talk to you about the solutions. What could the government do right now, this week to try and help solve this problem?

PHIL What they should do is declare a state of emergency. The latest independent research from Otago University says that there are about 41,000 New Zealanders who are homeless. That includes people that are living in campgrounds, entire families squashed into the single room of a shared house. And this is a social crisis. But unfortunately, the government is like a possum in the headlights. What they should do is massively increase the resourcing for supported emergency housing. It’s just not good enough to leave this job to volunteers like Renee Grey in Katie Bradford’s story there. She’s an angel, and there are people like Renee doing that actually in towns and cities all over New Zealand. We saw Te Puea Marae. But this needs the resources that only government can bring.

JESSICA So, tell me more about this state of emergency. What would that help, bringing in the army and things like this? Why do we need this?

PHIL Look, there are a whole lot of ideas floating round. Someone’s proposed the old Mt Eden Prison be used. Someone else suggested a cruise ship. Paul Bennett’s talking about pod housing. Look, my message to the government is I don’t care how you do it; just do it. Put a roof over the heads of these people.

JESSICA But why the state of emergency? How do you think that will help?

PHIL Because this is a social crisis - 41,000 New Zealanders living in utterly unacceptable conditions. It’s the government’s job to show some urgency to put a roof over their heads. Now, the government has the resources to do it. They could lease the homes overnight if they chose to, but they just lack the political will and the sense of urgency to fix it.

JESSICA Isn’t it also, wouldn’t it be a terrible look if in New Zealand we declared a state of emergency on homelessness? Wouldn’t it have all sorts of implications?

PHIL But this is a disastrous look. It’s not about how the rest of the world sees us, even though the international media are now covering the New Zealand crisis. But I think the reason why this is profoundly disturbing for New Zealanders is it calls into question who we are as a nation. Are we really the kind of country that thinks it’s okay for a mother and young kids to pay $400 a week to rend a cockroach-infested one-room cabin in a suburban campground? We are better than this.

JESSICA Do you think New Zealanders are getting complacent. Do you think if it’s not affecting one personally -- they may see them when they come into Queen Street or something like that – but it’s not affecting people on a daily basis, do you think New Zealanders are turning a blind eye?

PHIL No, I don’t. I think the public are very very concerned about this. The fact the homelessness crisis now affects young families – families with children are a majority of that 41,000 people who are affected – 52% of the homeless are either in paid employment or study. Now that’s unbelievable. For people who are earning a wage, to be homeless says that something is seriously out of whack. It’s the government that’s a possum in the headlights here. But I think the public are deeply concerned about this.

JESSICA You talked about the international attention we’re getting on this. The Guardian and Al Jazeera came and did stories on this. How embarrassing is that for us?

PHIL Well, I think it’s extremely embarrassing. We should be able to provide decent housing for everybody. Now, as well as delivering emergency housing, the problem in Taupo, as Katie Bradford’s story showed, is that there’s a desperate shortage of affordable rental housing.

JESSICA I do just want to talk about these homelessness solutions, though, in terms of the state of emergency. I mean, if your brought in tents and things like that, is that going to offer people a better option than these cabins that we saw in that story in Taupo?

PHIL Well, the first thing here is to put a decent, warm, dry roof over the heads of these people. But, Jessica, I’m going to push back on you on this question of affordable rental housing. There will be no solution to the homelessness crisis until we get more affordable rental housing. And the government’s currently selling off state houses. If they were building a thousand more every year instead of selling them off, we’d have an extra 10,000 state houses, and we simply wouldn’t have this homelessness crisis.

JESSICA That’s perhaps a medium or longer term goal. In terms of the short-term solution, your message to the government is saying, “Let’s do this state of emergency, let’s call this.” Why are they reluctant to do it?

PHIL I just think the government’s in denial, generally, about the housing crisis. But they are even challenging the official Statistics New Zealand definition of homelessness. They’re trying to say that it’s only real homelessness if you’re sleeping out under a bush. They don’t want to count people who are crammed into single rooms in shared houses or campgrounds, sleeping in their cars and so on. Do we really think that someone who’s sleeping in their car isn’t homeless? Or someone who’s sleeping in an uninsulated sleepout in someone’s backyard has a home? Surely not. I just think we’re better than that. The government needs to wake up and take this crisis seriously.

JESSICA That’s a nice place to leave it. Thank you very much for your time this morning.

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