Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
The government's decision to stop some work to prevent people ending up in emergency housing misses a "critical opportunity" to fix systemic issues leading to homelessness, advocates warn.
The Ministry of Social Development scrapped the first phase of its 'early interventions' work programme, which looks at how it could improve its own systems to better support people struggling to get into, or stay in, a stable home.
Staff could not cope with the workload, partly because they were too busy with work related to changes to the Jobseeker benefit, a report to Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka showed.
Potaka said phase two - "a more holistic approach" - would still go ahead.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development confirmed it provided advice to Potaka on Thursday about phase two, which it said "focused on identifying cross-system opportunities for intervention to prevent the need for EH".
"HUD is working with other agencies to provide further advice on possible additional interventions."
Wellington's Downtown Community Ministry director Stephen Turnock, whose work supports homeless people, said abandoning prevention strategies created a "revolving door" of homelessness and hardship.
He acknowledged MSD was facing substantial workload pressures, but was concerned the work being stopped was a "critical opportunity" to address systemic issues including communication gaps between agencies.
"Scrapping a phase of this programme especially at a time where we are seeing significant pressure on housing and support systems, feels like it's a bit of a step backwards," he said.
"We risk allowing more whānau to fall into crisis before assistance is available, which is far more costly, both socially and fiscally, than investing early."
The Salvation Army's social policy mission officer Ian Hutson said some of the work that was halted sought to ensure agencies were "joined up" in their approach to supporting people experiencing housing insecurity.
"That is critical to what needs to happen, but when they say that phase is finished, we hope that doesn't mean ... they've given up on some of the initiatives."
The MSD report said it would this year evaluate the supports currently in place for people struggling to get into, and stay in, a stable home.
The Salvation Army supported that, Hutson said.
"Programmes like transitional housing, Housing First, Sustaining Tenancies we think are critical to keeping people in housing," he said.
"At the moment, the settings are leading towards some disturbing signs of increasing homelessness, so it's really urgent."
Helping people retain tenancies was vital, given if they lost them, it was now harder to access emergency housing after the eligibility criteria was tightened last year, he said.
"So you don't want someone to fall out if they can't then get back in for a long, long time.
"It's contributing to the homelessness that we're seeing increasingly on the streets and in other places."
The government has previously denied that changes to emergency housing settings has contributed to increasing homelessness.
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