Cookie has lived on and off the streets for most of his life after stints in state homes, a boys home, and jail. Photo: Davina Zimmer
An advocate for people sleeping rough says homelessness is reaching 'crisis levels' and he's seeing children as young as nine turn up for emergency accommodation. What's gone wrong in Aotearoa?
At 10.30am on a cold day in central Auckland, 61-year-old Cookie sits on a small blue bottle crate on the pavement, strumming his guitar and singing.
The impromptu performance is taking place in Cookie's 'lounge'. On the ground next to him is his small mattress with a light duvet - that is his bedroom. All of it is surrounded by road cones to protect his patch.
Cookie has lived on and off the streets for most of his life after stints in state homes, a boys home, and jail.
He says he has seen a sharp rise in the number of people living rough on the streets in recent months, which puts a strain on available food and resources.
Statistics back that up - according to Auckland Council, the number of people sleeping rough or in their cars in the city has risen from 426 last September to 653 this January.
Cookie blames family breakdowns and a rise in mental health issues for the increase in street living, and says the latter plays a role in behavioural fallout.
Experts point to several other factors as well, including unaffordable housing, a housing shortage, the cost-of-living crisis, and social and systemic factors.
"If we're really honest, there's been a crisis around homelessness for a very long time in Aotearoa," says Aaron Hendry, who set up an organisation, Kick Back, to offer wraparound support for young people sleeping rough, including 24/7 accommodation, health services, and legal advice.
"I think what we're seeing though is an escalating crisis."
At the time of the 2023 Census, 112,496 people were estimated to be severely housing deprived. But the number of people actually living rough on the streets has jumped since then, according to those working with the homeless.
"The truth is that no one, no government, has really done enough, fast enough, to respond to homelessness and to respond to youth homelessness specifically. Yet, over the last couple of years, we've seen some very intentional decisions which are exacerbating the crisis and making the experience of homelessness far more dangerous and far more likely to occur."
He says one of the obvious examples is the move to introduce stricter entry criteria for emergency housing, and the requirements that make it more difficult to stay.
"The reality that we have seen ... is young people going into Work and Income and asking for support for shelter and being denied that support and as a result having to sleep on the streets and not being able to get access to housing.
He's seen children as young as nine turn up looking for help.
"Experiencing homelessness is really, really dangerous... The consequences are significant trauma, it's often really significant mental health deterioration, physical health deterioration. In the worst-case scenario, people die in really dangerous and complex situations."
He suggested New Zealand follow the lead of Wales, which trialled the "Duty to Assist" legislation, which is a homelessness prevention strategy that's been successfully implemented to enforce the human right to housing.
It holds local authorities accountable for their role in preventing homelessness.
"In practicality in New Zealand this would mean that if you went to Work and Income and you were sleeping on the street or maybe you were at risk of experiencing homelessness because something was going on, Work and Income would have an obligation - a legal obligation - to provide you with support to prevent that experience of homelessness or get you shelter tonight so they could start supporting you to get into stable accommodation."
He has some other "simple advice" for the government.
"They could roll back their emergency housing reforms, they could roll back the reforms around the welfare system, which has made it more punitive on people, they could start committing to a strong public housing build programme ... they could invest in a strategy to end and prevent homelessness.
"Right now the government could make some really clear decisions to start working toward a future where homelessness doesn't exist.
"If my child was sleeping on the street, on Queen Street tonight, it would be a crisis for me and I would do everything I could to make sure that that child was looked after, right?
"I think our government needs to understand that they have the same level of responsibility for children in this country and for all of us as a society and we need to understand that homelessness is a crisis, and respond to it with the energy that a crisis would demand."
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