As housing prices soar, New Zealand tackles a surge in homelessness

AUCKLAND (NYTIMES) - New Zealand is known to many outsiders as a beautiful, affluent country, the place where the Lord Of The Rings movies were made. But Joseph Takairangi and thousands of others know it better for the expensive housing that lies far out of their reach.


On a recent cool night in a misty rain, Takairangi and some of his friends were looking for somewhere to spend the night. They had decamped to a parking lot after being ejected from a stretch of takeaway food shops in Henderson, an Auckland suburb.


Soon, a speaker mounted on a wall above them crackled: "Move along, please, guys."


New Zealand has the highest homelessness rate among the wealthy nations that make up the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Yale University study found last year (2017), though it noted that definitions of homelessness vary by country.


Social workers here say the country's homeless - 1 per cent of the population, according to a comprehensive study from a New Zealand university - increasingly include people with jobs.


"We need a no-fuss system to get people into houses," said Takairangi, 36. "There's too much fuss."





Along with those like Takairangi who sleep on the streets, New Zealand's homeless include people living in cars, those in precarious or overcrowded living arrangements and families who are in short-term emergency shelter - often cramped motel rooms or trailer parks - while they wait for public housing to become available.


Housing Minister Phil Twyford said that since a "meltdown" in New Zealand's housing market after the 2008 global financial crisis, prices in some parts of the country had doubled, rising well above where they had been before the crisis.


Auckland, the country's largest city, consistently ranks among the 10 least affordable housing markets in Demographia International's annual global survey, which measures house prices against income.


MORE. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/au...n-homelessness

Posted about this before, Melbourne, docklands, million $ plus apartments, more homeless on the river bank and doorways than lights on in the apartment blocks.
All non resident Chinese owned, some people made millions, others found even with a low paid service job, the street is all they can afford.