Aotearoa’s decades-long housing crisis is now deep into another winter of discontent.
Last week’s events show the Government’s cuts to state house building and emergency housing in motels through 2024 have come home to roost even harder in 2026 than seen in the winter of discontent in 2016, when Te Puea Memorial Marae in Māngere opened its doors to Auckland’s homeless in the absence of Government action. It became an election issue the next year.
Add in this years ‘moving on’ orders going through Parliament that will criminalize rough sleepers as young as 14 years old, and effective cuts to rent subsidies for Kāinga Ora tenants and Accommodation Supplement recipients, and 2026 is shaping up as New Zealand’s housing crisis annus horribilis.
Just in the last week, we’ve learned:
Staff at MSD were threatened1 in late 2024 with the sack unless they kicked people out of motels to meet the Government’s target of cutting the numbers of people housed in motels by 75% by 2030.
MSD achieved the target five years early, but only by by failing to find and offer other places to live for around 30% of the 4,000 people forced to leave the motels, with just 20% of those moving out of transitional housing going into permanent home2;
Those missing 1,000 or so homeless people were not tracked, and homeless shelters and food banks are reporting hundreds more people are now living on the streets, especially in Auckland;
The Auckland City Mission has called on the Government to fund at least 200 new homes for many hundreds more people sleeping on the streets in Auckland with nowhere to go after the Mission closes each night at 5pm;
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon admitted3 after being asked for the seventh time in a news conference that he did not know homeless people in Auckland had nowhere to go after 5pm, but he said he was comfortable homeless people were being offered enough help; but,
MSD admitted it rejected 30% of applications for emergency housing because applicants were deemed not eligible, with the criteria of ‘caused their own homelessness’ used as the main reason for rejection; and,
HUD reported in its Homelessness Insights report for the March quarter that Health NZ had recorded 1,037 people using hospitals last year were homeless, vs 790 in 2023, and Corrections reported 532 ex-inmates were homeless last year, vs 430 a year earlier. Health NZ also recorded 1,631 mental health patients were homeless last year.
(See more detail in the Chart Pack, along with my full interview above from last week with Auckland City Mission CEO Helen Robinson).
Elsewhere in the news today:
Newsroom has published the results of a three-year investigation into diagnoses of unexplained injury diagnoses from Auckland’s Starship Hospital. (See more below in my Picks n’ Mixes of scoops and deep-dives)
Paula Penfold details her investigation for Stuff of a new ACC policy denying income support to sufferers of child abuse because it happened before they became income earners. (See more below in my Picks n’ Mixes of Scoops and Deep-dives)
Infrastructure Minister and Hutt South MP Chris Bishop acknowledges in a deep-dive by Jim Kayes for Stuff that Hutt Hospital is run down and leaky, but says it’s not the worst hospital in New Zealand.
The Post-$ leads this morning with expectations of a rate hike by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand on Wednesday.
NZ First Leader Winston Peters is campaigning to deny voting rights to non-citizens, while National says it wants to do seven more trade deals in the next five years.
(Usually, I put a paywall in at this point in the email and the podcast and video above is only available to paying subscribers, but I wanted to make sure this was available to all immediately today so have opened it immediately. The Kākā covers Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate. Subscribe to support more of this work being done in the public interest and being made available to the public.)
(I am considering removing the paywall on The Kākā’s entire archive and all emails and articles produced between today and the election on November 7. I am also considering offering half-price annual subscriptions to new subscribers until the end of 2026. I did this in 2022 and at the ends of 2023 and 2024, but not 2025. But I first want to ask permission of existing paying subscribers, almost all of whom now pay the full price for The Kākā and have come to expect it will not be available to all. I have created two polls for paying subscribers to ask for that permission over the next week. Non-paying subscribers cannot vote. I’ll proceed if over 50% of voting paying subscribers say yes to both questions.)
Chart Pack of the Day
Why people say they’re homeless
Hospitalisations of homeless people rising since late 2023
7% of youth homeless, including garages and cars
Rejection of Housing Special Needs grants more than triples
My Picks n’ Mixes
My Top Pick n’ Mix Six
Investigation by Bonnie Summer for Newsroom: What is going on at Starship’s child protection unit? ‘For decades, a small group of specialists at Starship Hospital’s child protection unit have played a central role in some of NZ’s most serious physical child abuse cases. What happens if those findings are wrong?.’
Deep-dive Laura Walters for Newsroom: Health NZ’s silence on child abuse misdiagnoses ‘Newsroom Investigates has spent almost three years trying to get answers from Health NZ and ministers on what now appears to be serious issue with the misdiagnosis of non-accidental injury in infants.’
Deep-dive by Cass Mason for Newsroom: ‘If we think it’s abuse, it’s abuse’ ‘For decades, NZ juries have heard that unexplained rib fractures in infants are highly indicative of abuse. But a Dunedin court hears the science underpinning these diagnoses is facing growing global scrutiny.’
Comment by anonymous for Newsroom: Clinging to hope when your world is kicked out from under you ‘What began as a grandmother’s fight to help her daughter get back custody of her twins has become a case of medical negligence and broken systems.’
Investigation by Paula Penfold for Stuff: How one woman’s eight-year fight raises questions about ACC’s ‘abhorrent’ new approach to weekly compensation
Deep-dive Jim Kayes for Stuff: Bad, but not the worst. Chris Bishop says other hospitals in worse shape than leaky Hutt
Scoops elsewhere this morning
Jimmy Ellingham for RNZ: Health NZ apologises over paused bowel cancer procedures - but what next?
Marty Sharpe for Stuff: Seymour ‘implores’ Gisborne council to go easy on forestry companies
Column by Rob Stock for SST-$: Compulsory KiwiSaver has a property loophole banks will exploit
John Anthony for BusinessDesk-$: Air NZ and Air India preparing JV application, CEO says
Deep-dive by Amelia Wade for SST-$: The Google files: Inside the lobbying that stalled New Zealand’s media law
My full Picks n’ Mixes, plus front pages and Cartoons are available earlier to paying subscribers online, who are also able to comment and enter The Kākā’s chat room.
Timeline Cleansing Nature Pic: Best puddle ever.
Ka kite ano
Bernard
1News Q+A: ‘Perverse incentive’: MSD staff metrics include emergency housing grants.’ Some staff receive regular grading on eleven measures, including the number of people in their region who receive emergency housing grants.’
Lauren Crimp for RNZ: Third of those declined emergency housing not offered any alternative; Julia Gabel for NZ Herald: Just one fifth of families leaving immediate access transitional housing going onto long-term home
