Housing is a human right

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HousingIsaRight

When my left wing mates find out that I now work for Lifewise, they’re often surprised. What is a hand-on-heart leftie doing working for an organisation that has its roots in the Methodist church?

I had the same questions – but when I started looking into Lifewise and its Methodist heritage, I was impressed its track record of speaking out against injustice and supporting the working class.

In the early days of New Zealand, waterside workers were up in arms about the paltry wages and awful working conditions. So they pulled out the pickets from the local church fence, and used them to fend off the police who were trying to shut the protest down. After the protests had died down, the police came to the Methodist church to ask them to denounce the picketers.

The response of the church was; “All of our resources are here for the people, for what they need.” That works for me!

Lifewise today is a social agency that tackles the issues in NZ that have been relegated to the “too hard” basket. While our roots are in the church, our staff and volunteers come from all walks of life – from die-hard atheists to devout Muslims. The thing that we all have in common is continually challenging ourselves to create lasting change.

It’s a different approach to traditional charity models, which often ask “what can we do to help this person – the deserving poor”. There’s an assumption that there will always be poverty and disadvantage so we work to manage it – the Poorhouse, or, in today’s lingo, the soup kitchen.

I refuse to accept structural exclusion, whether it’s economic or social. The poor will not always be with us. We have the resources and scale in New Zealand to achieve systemic change. If we want to.

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The charity model reinforces the power imbalance – and we’re here to challenge it. We need to reframe the issues. For example , we don’t have a homelessness crisis – we have a housing crisis.

There are many reasons why someone becomes homeless – unaffordable housing, losing a job, divorce, illness, addiction, and mental illness all play a significant role. Many of homeless people in NZ were struck by a personal tragedy and lacked a support system to get help when they needed it.
The reasons someone ends up on the street may be complicated, but the solution to their homelessness is actually really simple. People need to be supported to get off the streets and into homes. Cities all around the world have seen their homeless numbers plummet by doing just this – Utah’s Housing First programme has seen its homeless population shrink by 74% in just one year.

At Lifewise, we firmly believe that everyone in New Zealand should have access to safe, secure, and affordable homes, free from the spectre of forced eviction. Having access to adequate housing is a human right, yet New Zealand has no national strategy for ending homelessness.

But what do you think?

To mark World Social Justice Day this week, the team at Lifewise is seeking views from the public.

We want to hear your thoughts on homelessness, and whether you think there should be a national strategy to end homelessness in our country.
Please take part in our poll and help us end homelessness in New Zealand.

 

By Lifewise General Manager, Moira Lawler

2 COMMENTS

  1. If Housing New Zealand would be doing the job they were once expected to do, and were given the resources to enable them to do so, we would not need any non government organisations jump in to do the job.

    The Utah model may have its benefits, and it is astonishing that this was even tried and done in a Republican state there. But New Zealand has since the mid or late 1930s had social policies that were intending to deliver something like this.

    I fear the problem lies with governments, and that is governments who follow the neoliberal ideology, and are thus reluctant to commit themselves to do what is necessary.

    Hence they choose the easier option, to get rid of such responsibilities and “outsource” services, get “private” sector providers into the game, to do the work, even “cheaper”, which is near impossible.

    All we get here is a new experiment, where Salvation Army and other organisations are encouraged to take on new responsibilities, by possibly getting housing given to them, or sold at a cheap price, to do with it what they see fit, and what the market may allow them to sell and buy and build, to make a bit of money, to “invest” in new, larger complex, cheaper, low quality housing for the poor.

    These will be the ghettos of the future, only administered by different agencies, and the experiment will largely fail, so the state, and with that the citizen tax payer, will eventually have to pick up the pieces, and deliver what could have been done right and properly from the start.

    Stop the neoliberal social experiments, using the weakest as laboratory rats, all intended to “prove” a case that can and will never be proved.

    A right to housing exists already, but it has sadly been undermined and hollowed out over decades, by neglecting state housing, and by failing to deliver health and other services that could and should have been delivered.

    We are there where the US is in most states, where the responsibilities for those falling through the nets is left with the City Missions and with last resort agencies, to pick up the pieces. They depend on donations or money donated into trusts, hence can only do so much.

    Name and shame, the governments in NZ Inc that let it come to this, and that still are reluctant to take necessary action.

    There should not be a need for Lifewise, I am afraid.

  2. Thanks Lifewise for all that u try and do. I know that the Methodist church is a fair minded organisation afta going thru a hard personal and family crisis in the ’80’s in Palm. Nth, and that they helped and supported me, even though I am not a Methodist, when I was young and under a lot of stress in a positive and encouraging way that I have never forgotten. I think the govt of NZ has continuously let a lot of poor abused, and damaged people struggle by themselves since neo-liberal capitalism landed in the late ’80’s. Currently those in need can mainly access assistance through the Salvation ‘Army’ [who have access to millions in funding from National, and Destiny Church, as they are ‘apolitical’ (really, many of them wear uniforms in their army of God and the Royals who all are getting richer, while more and more people suffer.] I think there are many models of community and state provided housing NZ/Aotearoa could invest in that are eco friendly and cost less to build and provide using recycled materials, clay, wood and glass bottles. See Earth spaceship fbook page for more info. Lets hope we can make some changes this year to the inflated house market pricess for renters and buyers in many regions by building this type of housing, as the stress of not having a basic need being met is not like camping, well, that is if we still want NZ/Aotearoa to be a more egalitarian country than many others are.

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