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Warkworth social agencies are calling on government and land developers to work together to provide more social housing, as local families are being forced onto the street due to an acute lack of housing.
DePaul House, a charitable transitional housing provider, says DePaul has 25 families on its waitlist, but only 10 houses in Warkworth, and only two families in their care have managed to find new homes since October.
“One family went to a private rental in Wellsford and the other had to go to social housing in South Auckland,” DePaul general manager Jan Rutledge says. “With something like 300 per cent growth in the area being scheduled in the Unitary Plan and developments already underway, there needs to be planning right now for social housing provision,” she says.
Jan says the already rocketing population growth is increasing prices of private rentals and local working poor families are getting pushed out.
“If a family is in a rental and their landlord sells the house, they often can’t afford to get into a new one.
“This is purely a lack of housing, not a social issue. They are well functioning families needed by the community to work in the rural sector.”
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) provides emergency housing in motels in Wellsford and Warkworth, but Jan says these are not good environments for a family.
“For children, a motel is not set up for growing up, and there can be a toxic mix of young, single homeless, which is alarming and unsafe for kids.”
Jan says that although there is a severe problem developing with increasing homelessness and a lack of housing, the issue is largely hidden from public view.
“The affluence in the area masks it. It is hard to measure because people don’t like to put their hand up and say there are 15 of us in a two-bedroom house.”
Among the families referred to DePaul were two with cases of rheumatic fever, likely caused by substandard housing.
DePaul’s sentiments are strongly echoed by Women’s Centre Rodney manager Colleen Julian and social worker Maria Collins, who have driven around North Rodney in the early hours of the morning to get a count of the “hidden” homeless.
Women and their children are sleeping in their cars where they can’t be seen at local beaches, because it’s warmer and safer than the alternative, they say.
“For women, it is safer in the car because you can lock it and move away faster if you need to,” Colleen says.
Colleen and Maria were participating in a count organised by Auckland Council and the resulting report came out in May this year.
“While it is commonly understood people are living without shelter in central, west and south Auckland, findings showed that 15 per cent of homeless people were in north Auckland,” the report says.
The Rodney district was calculated to have 4.5 per cent of Auckland’s homeless, and yet there are only 55 managed Housing New Zealand (HNZ) properties in the area – just 0.002 per cent of Auckland’s total stock.
“A well-established family goes on the list and HNZ encourages them to move to another community if a house comes up, but they don’t want to leave because all their support and community is here,” Colleen says.
“Because they decline the house that is offered, they go down the list and that is how people end up living in a car or garage.”
Although DePaul House is active in the area, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the government department in charge of transitional housing.
Deputy chief executive Scott Gallacher says in the quarter ending June 2019, HUD had six transitional housing places in Rodney, which can support up to 24 families a year.
He says there are currently 56 applications waiting on the housing register, which is a 75 per cent increase on this time last year. Meanwhile, he says households are already supported in public housing.
