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December 16, 2022
Kaupapa Māori approach best for emergency housing
Peter Verschaffelt
Posted On December 16, 2022
The Human Rights Commission has recommended a kaupapa Māori approach after finding breaches of both the Human Rights Act and the Treaty of Waitangi in the way homeless are being treated.
Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt says while the present Government has done more than any other in the past 30 years to build more housing, there are still shortcomings.
Some emergency and transitional housing is not up to standard, and people are being evicted into homelessness from emergency housing.
He says the work of some community providers is pointing the way.
“We’ve recommended there should be one unified, refreshed emergency housing system with a common set of wraparound services , with common contractual arrangements between house providers and government, not between housing providers and clients, but in the centre of that refreshed, unified emergency housing system there needs need to be placed kaupapa Maori, te tiriti,” he says.
Mr Hunt says from Kaitaia to Wellington the commission has seen kaupapa Maori housing projects which are much more relational in dealings with people who are suffering rather than being transactional and consumerist.
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