Can't wait until all of Australia's homeless move to NZ for the free lodging and see how that works out...

Here in Victoria and Vancouver, we deal with the homeless from the entire country who flock here for the warmer Winters and the fact that our cities foolishly pump resources in to helping the homeless.. which then attracts more homeless and stretched those resources...

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Just like California. The madness needs to cease.

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DISH is how we do it.

I agree. And really what have they got to lose? They are geographically isolated so they are just taking care of their own. I don't think people chose to be homeless. And its not like people are going to be giving up their jobs to be in really basic gov't housing. Then they need to come up with a long term solution.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

//I don't think people chose to be homeless//

This is the dirty secret about the homeless, atleast in the US. The vast majority choose to be homeless. If you gave them an apartment, they’d use it for the occasional shower but probably wouldn’t even sleep there (been tried and tested). The homeless shelters here in CA generally require them to be in before a certain time in the evening but the homeless don’t want that. They want freedom to use drugs and do what they want.

Here in CA there has been a massive clean up effort along the Santa Ana river bed after shuttling the tent city set up by the homeless and it’s disgusting what is found in the cleanup. A judge has ruled the city can not evict the homeless from illegally setting up a tent city unless they are offered housing somewhere. They’ve been offered temporary housing in various places but most don’t want it so they’ll erect another tent city elsewhere. Needles, used condoms, alcohol bottles, sewage, etc etc.

It’s odd to me that a judge has made this ruling - is it the responsibility of a city to provide housing for everyone??

If you don’t believe me then try volunteering at a homeless shelter and talk to the people who come in for a meal or volunteer to help cleanup one of these sites. Because most want to be homeless it is virtually impossible to solve the problem as housing isn’t the resolution.

Wow, just like Boulder!

Exactly. They are taking care of their own but they are doing it. Kudos to New Zealand.

Most people who are homeless have either substance abuses or mental health issues. I know a former chiropractor and a former university physics prof who developed mental illness and have now joined the ranks of the homeless. I also have a nephew that has schizophrenia and is incapable of supporting himself. If it was not for family support, he'd by all likelihood be homeless as he can not function at a normal level.

i'd quibble with this. hard statistics are tough to come by, but the people who you see sleeping on the street or panhandling make up a small portion of the homeless.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

because lots of homeless people make 3-hour international flights? and get residence permits to stay at their destination indefinitely?

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

If they can find their way across Canada, I'm sure they can find a way to scrape up the cash for a ticket.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

There is a small percentage wise population of folks who won't take shelter. So you are right. Although a lot of those folks have mental illness or serious addictions

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Very true and for many the addiction exacerbates the mental illness. In the eight years of working with the homeless, I have seen the same faces on the streets. Most of them have chosen to be homeless for the freedom it provides in all ways. There is a big difference between homelessness and being homeless.

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DISH is how we do it.

Sounds good for sound bites and feels, but frankly it's nonsense.

The majority of the homeless they're talking about are the working or studying poor, those who can't afford the high rents in popular cities. They sleep in their car or campervan, or sofa surf when they're not in their jobs or studying.

The rents are high for various reasons, but mainly to do with population growth in the popular cities, mostly to do with immigration, and a lack of suitable land to build on in the same cities. Another factor is landlords bringing their housing stock up to the new codes (heating, insultation, ventilation etc) and passing on the costs to their tennants through increased rents.

Unfortunately, the government can't get their ambitious building project off the ground as there's not enough builders, and they're clamping down on immigration, which is where the new builders come from. It's ironic. One newsstory from this weekend argued that a building boom could only be achieved by illegal immigrants (manpower plus illegally low wages, terms and conditions).

With regards to the students, maybe, just maybe, offering free tuition to first years students wasn't the best idea, as it's enticed them to go to university in an unaffordible major city, rather than staying at home and going to a local college to study, oh, I don't know, maybe a trade. You know, the skills NZ is currently importing as they don't have enough of them.

So unless Twyford is going to magic up some shelters, houses and flats from thin air, its not going to happen by June. He may as well stand on Oriental Bay and order the sea back.

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Swim. Overbike. Walk.

Something of a myth. Though some % of homeless reject all forms of help, there's wide variability. If you research the "Housing First" model, there's some pretty good evidence that if you provide no-strings housing, most homeless people will take it. And there's also evidence that it's more cost-effective than leaving them on the street.




Well unless you make homelessness itself illegal, it seems that some legal avenue for transient residence should be allowed by a city. Constantly playing eviction whack-a-mole because there's no legal way to be homeless seems not very cost-effective, and not good public policy.

I agree with you in one sense, having seen some of these tent cities. They're dirty, nasty places, and degrading to anyone living in them. Homelessness should not be fetishized or romanticized.