May 22, 2023
Homeless effort bogged in complexity
A Māori leader who has taken a lead in helping the homeless in Tamaki Makaurau says a Māori housing authority is urgently needed.
Te Puea Memorial Marae chair Hurimoana Dennis has welcomed a Waitangi Tribunal kaupapa inquiry finding that the crown’s failure to address Maori homelessness was a treaty breach.
Mr Dennis says 60 percent of the country’s 100,000 homeless people are Māori.
He says a housing equivalent of the Maori health authority could cut through the dysfunction created by the current split between the three agencies dealing with housing and homelessness – Social Development, Kainga Ora and Housing and Urban Development.
“Because the coordination between the three lead government agencies has not been good. It might be good at CE level, at ministerial level, that they’re all talking really well and doing what they do, but the application, the operation and the implementation of all these systems, policies and frameworks, that’s just unbelievably complicated,” Mr Dennis says.
He says needy people are falling through the cracks despite good intentions by the Government.