Nothing sums NZ up better than beggars outside luxury stores on Queen Street
We are obliged to see the beggars on our streets.
Forcing them from sight is more immoral than giving them money.
As we rush around in our day we should be forced to acknowledge that for many of our most vulnerable, there is a totally different type of reality.
Underfunded mental health services, housing services and health services collide with a welfare state designed to disqualify and punish and explode onto our streets in a grim way that jars.
Good.
Poverty and desperation is ugly and it should jar us from our wage slavery.
I’ve lived in the inner city for two decades, the homelessness is worse now than it has ever been. I have always bought food, provided clothing, change and a mattress once for those living rough.
There but for the grace of God go I.
Being confronted by the failures of our social services is crucial if middle class voters are to vote for their country over their property portfolio in 2017.
Street hawkers annoy me more than beggars. Shops have to pay rents to be in places like Cuba Street and Lambton Quay in Wellington and then they have some one selling some crap jewellery etc in front of them who not paying any rent for the privilege. Bad buskers are a pain too.
Lambton Quay is particularly bad before Christmas. Every 25 yards or so you have beggar, hawker, bad busker doing Christmas carols, beggar, hawker, busker etc.
Last time I was in Palmerston North I saw lots of beggars in the shopping centre on a Sunday afternoon, which suggests that the problem isn’t just poverty but complete social isolation with these people actually having no where else to go anyway in terms of what we might know as “home” – no places to call home with any sense of permanence, no other place where they people they socially connect with others.
There have only been two political time periods when Palmerston North has had beggars : the last 2 National governments.
I think isn’t just about poverty – it’s also an accommodation, meanness of benefits (and amount being tossed off said benefits) and probably the precariousness of the mental health service which is starving for funds like all the rest health.
People who live on the street don’t get a benefit unless they have a bank account. Which unless they already had the account before becoming homeless, no bank will give them an account if they don’t have an address. If they had an address they wouldn’t be living on the street. Our most vulnerable deserve loving care like anyone else in trouble. No judgements, no anger, no predjudice.
Ah that’s neo-liberalism for you
Every time I go into the CBD of Auckland I give $20 to a homeless person.
It deeply saddens me to eat a meal and see a hungry person rifling through a rubbish bin while I do so.
While there have always been homeless people in Auckland as far as I can remember, it has never been this bad.
Our economy is failing a significant and increasing number of people. I see a great many very rich people, and an increasing number of very poor people. The gap is widening.
Our economy needs to provide work for ALL. This acceptance of structural unemployment so that big business can keep labour costs down is unethical, immoral and inhumane.
This is what you voted for New Zealand. This is the outcome of 32 years of neo liberal economics. This is EXACTLY what the opponents of neo liberalism said would happen.
Right on and well written Lara.
Jonky Donky has failed this country miserably and then he has the
watermelon sized balls to lie about it all.
Lets force Paula Bennett and her master Donky and his lap dog Bill English to spend a night on the streets of the CBD in Auckland and then have the nerve to lie about the economy and the state of affairs.
Give the money to a good city charity so it is used wisely instead.
Pretty sure homeless people rifling through rubbish bins are hungry. Pretty sure that money is going to be spent on food.
And if they want a little luxury in the form of alcohol and ciggies to numb pain and relieve distress? So what?
We are allowed that luxury. Why do you deny it to them?
Pretty sure charities would have overheads and costs, and people profiting from running them.
Nope. I’d rather give it directly to the people who need it. And then not judge them for how they spend it.
I admire your attitude.
this comment says so much about you.
So true Lara, Neoliberalism has created an attitude of look after yourself first and to hell with everyone else. It’s a failed experiment and needs to be turned around.
Sort of. It’s actually ‘look after yourself and your family first, then those around us.’
The conflict here is not whether the masses care about the beggars, they do. Its more about how much care the masses think the beggars deserve. The New Zealand working class already spend over 20% their income to (indirectly) provide a no-fault health and welfare system to NZ citizens.
The NZ taxpayer does care. In fact, in some cases, eg. the 3rd generation state dependants, maybe they care too much
Well said. Another 5 star comment there Martyn. Completely agree with you.
Yes, I was in the city once again yesterday, and every time I go there, it disgusts me what I see. New developments, new shops, GUCCI, BOSS, endless other luxury shops, and masses of people, most either the office workers based in East Auckland, on the Shore and so, all middle class and upper class, and many overseas students, often also from rather privileged background flock around.
This is not the NZ I used to know, and I never believed (that is years ago) that we would have beggars sit in the streets asking for a few coins to buy their next bit of food or perhaps, to numb their senses, a bit of alcohol that they need after having become addicted.
Auckland is a disgrace, and I am furious at the Mayor and others, that go on talking crap like “the most liveable city in the world”. I think we are no different to many other cities with endless problems, and we are going high speed into a future where we will have the same crime and antisocial behaviour rates as any major city overseas.
Egalitarian rings as a hollow word in my ears, it is something that no longer exists here. When you allow the plutocrats to take over, as this present government has done, then democracy and freedom are also on the way out, as they will make their money rule every aspect of society, and the “riff raff” they see will be swept out or hidden away, or simply locked away, same as in any other place.
Does Len Brown ever walk Queen Street at night? Or does he live in his own bubble, like so many others, leaving the place in the city to escape to his lifestyle block or comfy home in the distant suburbs?
I feel ashamed of living in this country, a country not only of inequality, but of endless lies and pretence.
Good post Mike. What we are seeing per Keith Rankin post is a repeat of the 1930’s where inequality was bad aswell and we know what happened there. I believe a crash scenario is very close which will level every thing. Those Luxury stores will be very short lived… The politicians need to learn from history.
The linked article does mention that some of the “beggars” think of it as their “days work” and I think this is really important and it’s un-humane to take that away from someone. People have to structure their time. Perhaps for some it’s a way of fitting in, doing the daily commute to the panhandling spot, seeing your “colleagues”, doing the “water cooler gossip”.
Not everyone can sit in an office.
I’d like to see progressives drop the word beggars – in regard to panhandlers who are obliged to make ends meet by soliciting street donations.
When elitist politicians, such as Nicola Young, vocally employ the term beggar – on Radio New Zealand National and elsewhere – while simultaneously rolling a plum in their mouths, they are class-dog-whistling in an attempt to wedge voters away from their own real self interest.
When we join Young, and others, in using the pejorative, denigrating, term, beggar, we aid reactionaries in demoting the poorest of the poor…robbing these folks of their individual identities and reducing them to an undifferentiated mass of sub-human undesirables.
People soliciting financial aid on city streets may be panhandling, may, in fact begging, but they are not, by my lights, beggars. They are people seeking our aid … and should, for their sake and our own, be spoken of as people. Thanks.
Nicola Young? She of the plum in her mouth?
Beggar, from Oxford English Dictionary: A person, typically a homeless one, who lives by asking for money or food.
Mazrtyn said
“I’ve lived in the inner city for two decades, the homelessness is worse now than it has ever been.
I have always bought food, provided clothing, change and a mattress once for those living rough. There but for the grace of God go I.”
Heart wrenching stuff Martyn I used to see in Toronto during the 1992 slump and in US during the later 1990’s.
I feel such anger at this criminal enterprise called National, and they have dragged the worse off of our society through a bad of thorny roses almost as a crucifixion as Jesus was subjugated to by the romans.
Jonkey and is evil empire are the new romans.
Some people point out that beggars only go and spend their cash on alcohol, cigarettes or other drugs.
This is probably because they are addicted to them and the drug addiction services in this country are grossly underfunded.
Is it better that they beg or go into an shop with a weapon to rob it?
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