The couple were living in emergency housing in Papakura, and after the baby was born they were transferred to a two-bedroom apartment in Mangere, but the cleanliness of the place became a concern.

"When we arrived there was mould everywhere, and it was really dirty on the couch, the curtains and the washing machine," the male partner, 19, said.

Monte Cecilia Housing Trust manages the transitional home in Mangere, and it has 30 two-bedroom units capable of housing 120 families.

The couple claim they reached out to the Trust, who declined to clean anything telling the couple the mould marks were old and they should just put couch overs over it.

Monte Cecilia Trust Chief Executive Vicki Sykes said the trust could not comment on specific tenants' situations due to privacy issues, but the trust was sorry about the items in the unit that were not up to the usual standard when the tenants moved in.

"There were a range of reasons for this, including wanting to house the young family as quickly as possible.

"We have since attended to most of the outstanding items and have a plan in place to complete the remaining ones. Our staff continue to be in contact with the family to provide support and advocacy."

She said occasionally the trust could not complete all the cleaning and maintenance prior to a family moving in, especially in emergencies.

"In those cases, we make it a priority to get that completed as soon as we can." Read more

Fitzgerald was speaking at the formal opening of De Paul House's new 10-unit transitional housing complex in Northcote, Auckland.

Opened only in December 2021, the transitional housing complex has already housed 13 families with 18 adults and 13 children says Fitzgerald.

Built on the site formerly occupied by Hato Petera College, Northcote and owned by the Auckland Catholic diocese, the transitional housing units are the latest addition to the charity's increasing number of properties that provide safe, warm and healthy places for families facing homelessness.

De Paul House currently runs a total of 44 transitional housing facilities accommodating 60 families - 89 adults and 170 children. It is a non-denominational service.

"The thing that is different about these (new) units is they are bigger," says De Paul House general manager Jan Rutledge, QSM.

Bigger families "are hardest to house, both to secure permanent housing, but also transitional housing," she says.

Rutledge says that apart from the transitional and social housing, they have one property they are renting out.

"It's a new model. We've been offered it rent-free by a very philanthropic Catholic landlord," she said.

"We have moved one family through after three years into home ownership," she said.

Auckland diocese general manager James van Schie called the opening of the new transitional units a "proud day for the Hato Petera legacy.

"We've been working to repurpose the wider site.

"It is a great opportunity to address the critical housing shortage in our city and diocese," he said.

van Schie says there is a lot of opportunity at the four-hectare-plus site and the diocese wants to see the site really shine again to meet a contemporary need.

He said the diocese is actively involved and supporting the charitable outreach of De Paul House at the former school.

The diocese is doing its part to hold the site together he said.

"Bishop Patrick Dunn made that commitment, that we weren't looking to sell or alienate this land. I think this place will be a real beacon of hope for the future."

View inside one of the De Paul House transitional housing units

Current Auckland bishop Stephen Lowe blessed framed inspirational images that will adorn each of the ten units.

"This land teems with life, but unfortunately not everybody in our society gets that same access to the basics of life," Lowe said.

Calling the housing crisis something the nation should be ashamed of, Lowe told the De Paul House team that they flavour the lives of the people they serve with hope.

"You give them care that they need and link them with the people who can help them and journey with them," he said.

Talking at the opening, Associate Housing minister Poto Williams says the Government remains committed to "ending homelessness."

Source

• NZ Catholic

Other transitional housing providers are impacted as well says Monte Cecilia Trust chief executive Bernie Smith.

Smith says there are cheaper ways than private rentals to accommodate people who are homeless, and taxpayers should feel like their money is been wasted.

The Auckland Catholic Diocese's Trust delivers a wide range of housing-related services addressing immediate housing and associated needs, raising public awareness and influencing government policy on housing justice issues.

It also provides a range of wrap-around services aimed at building families' independence by developing the skills they need, however, the Ministry of Social Development stopped using Monte Cecilia after concerns about the impact their service was having on the private market.

The Government directed 37 million dollars to Auckland private landlords and property managers between November 2017 and June 2020.

"They never came to us or to other transitional housing providers that could' have provided homes at half or a third of the cost," Smith says.

Smith says Monte Cecilia made a complaint about it.

The Auditor-General has criticised the Social Development Ministry for renting private properties for emergency housing.

Last (financial) year saw 1996 families come to Monte Cecilia for assistance.

"These families had 4586 children, the country's future generation among them," says Smith.

"Where children experience or face homelessness and poverty, that impacts on their emotional and spiritual wellbeing", he says.

"It's so easy to blame homeless families for their circumstances rather than decades of Government inaction, market-driven policies, greedy landlords getting greedier, the rich getting richer, rising food, heating and fuel costs while these families don't even have a living household income despite being employed".

Smith questions how New Zealand has reached this point where poverty and homelessness are growing at such an alarming rate.

Monte Cecilia and other transitional housing providers had a housing supply line that created warm, dry, secure and sustainable longer-term housing options for families that moved them out of temporary transitional housing.

Smith is asking people to advocate with local and central government officials, pray and donate to support Monte Cecilia in supporting families.

"We continue to run programmes and all the things we do well - we just need affordable and sustainable homes to lease" says Smith.

​The Salvation Army's State of the Nation 2022 report says although the housing supply is increasing in total, much of it is unaffordable for the most vulnerable in the community.

Housing affordability in New Zealand has deteriorated to the worst level on record, with the average property worth 8.8 times the average income at the end of last year according to CoreLogic's latest housing affordability report.

The report says the generally accepted definition of "affordable" is house prices of three times the median income.

Source

• Scoop
• Stuff
• NewstalkZB
• Image: Stuff

It was true in the 19th century, and as Covid-19 stubbornly continues to spread through the community in our biggest city, it is true here and now.

An adequate standard of living has never been available for everyone in Aotearoa.

A Maori Women's Welfare League survey in 1952 reported that poverty, overcrowding, damp and unaffordable rental housing were key issues in Auckland. Seven decades on, the same is true.

In the middle of the last century, there were not enough state houses to meet the need.

Until the late 1940s, Maori had been excluded from state housing.

Due to sound government policies being put in place from the 50s to the mid-1980s things improved a lot, with proportionately more state houses, better incomes and the family benefit.

It was a period of greater stability in people's lives - having enough and reaching your potential was more likely to be achievable, although less likely for Maori than Pakeha.

Fast forward to September 2021 and we see the results of three decades of neglectful policy: fewer statehouses to meet the increasing needs.

At the same time, large numbers of people in private rentals face unaffordable rents and insecure tenancies.

The overall impact of current government policy is increasing the need for emergency housing, with more people homeless.

A low-wage economy leaves increasing numbers of people in paid work struggling or failing, to make ends meet.

It is even harder for those striving to live on inadequate benefits.

The result is many leading desperate lives; eyebrows no longer rise in surprise when we read about people, more commonly with disabled family members, living in garages or unsafe emergency accommodation, or young people dying from rheumatic fever.

To our shame, it has become familiar.

The Working for Families package is meant to be the primary source of income support for children in low-income families.

However, when parents receive benefits they are denied a crucial payment for their children ($72.50 per week or more for larger families).

This stark discrimination in favour of children of parents who were not on any benefit was introduced in 1996 and remains.

New Zealand is an outlier among similar countries; in Australia for example, children's income support is not tied to parents' source of income.

It is a tragic indicator that food banks provided by charities - some subsidised by the government - are now a routine feature in our country.

This is a result of decades of market-driven policies that prohibit many families from receiving adequate incomes to cover basic needs (including housing, power, transport, shoes, doctors' visits, and nutritious food); let alone enough to pay for school uniforms, sports gear and school trips.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Is it any wonder that delta should prove so difficult to eliminate among people left struggling to survive?

Lack of online access to news and information as well as language barriers for many, mean public health messages may not be seen by people who are already feeling isolated from their community.

For others, dire living conditions can bring on anxiety as well as mistrust of the government brought about by years of bitter experience.

Who can blame people on the margins if they prioritise finding access to food supplies for hungry children ahead of finding a way to get to a Covid centre for testing or vaccination?

Overcrowding and temporary housing make social distancing at home difficult.

Aaron Hendry, who works with homeless youth, puts it this way: "If we treated housing as a human right, we wouldn't be in this situation. Blaming whanau living in third world conditions, with shared facilities and unable to isolate misses the bigger issue that is contributing to this problem." Continue reading

• Innes Asher FRACP ONZM is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Paediatrics: Child and Youth Health, University of Auckland, was a member of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, and is a spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group