Minister in charge of emergency housing, Tama Potaka. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
The minister in charge of emergency housing has been unable to say whether homelessness has increased under this government, saying frontline providers have made "a variety" of comments to him.
Providers and advocates have told RNZ they have been seeing a spike in homelessness, with some blaming changes the government has made to emergency housing access.
But Tama Potaka told a committee of MPs there were "a lot of other contributing factors," such as the state of the economy and the supply of rentals.
The government met its target to reduce the number of households in emergency housing by 75 percent five years early, and announced on Monday that nearly 1000 families with more than 2124 children had moved from motels into homes in the first 12 months of the Priority One category.
At the same time, the government has also tightened the "gateway" for those trying to access emergency housing, with the Ministry of Social Development rejecting around a third of applications.
The government has dismissed concerns that stricter emergency housing criteria has led to an increase in homelessness.
However, Auckland Council's Community Committee recorded a 53 percent rise in people sleeping rough, from 426 people last September to 653 people in January, while data from Wellington's Downtown Community Ministry showed an increase in the number of people rough sleeping from October to December 2024, by about a third in comparison to the year before.
Appearing before Parliament's Social Services and Community Committee for Scrutiny Week, Potaka was repeatedly asked by Labour's Kieran McAnulty and the Greens' Ricardo Menéndez March whether frontline providers had told him that homelessness was increasing, and whether it was due to changes in government policy.
"Various community housing providers and others have observed a number of things, including some observations around homelessness," Potaka said.
"If you are meaning rough sleeping, they also observed, as did the Census, the amount of people rough sleeping between 2017 and 2023 increased."
Potaka also asked Menéndez March what he meant by homelessness.
"I think it's important to very, very clearly clarify whether or not you're talking about uninhabitable housing, overcrowding, people staying in motels, which has gone down by 85 percent as you know, including children, or rough sleeping.
"There's a range of different forms used to define what you're talking about."
Referring specifically to the gateway changes, McAnulty again asked whether providers have said specifically to Potaka whether that was a policy that had led to increased homelessness.
"Some frontline providers have said that it may be the case that the gateway changes to emergency housing have contributed to homelessness," Potaka said.
"So what you're willing to say is it might be the case?" McAnulty asked.
"No, that's what the provider said," Potaka responded.
Speaking to reporters after the committee, Potaka said providers had told him that while there had been increases, it was not necessarily because of the gateway changes.
"There are different providers who have different views over the causes, and some of those are economic, you know, how bad the economic situation has been in various towns and cities in this country," he said.
"Others are very, very clear about the massive upsurge in things like drug addiction and drug use. And we can go into that conversation too, about how the price of meth has halved and the usage has massively doubled for those that are actually long-term users."
As part of the gateway changes, MSD staff have been assessing whether an applicant has "unreasonably contributed" to their situation, or whether they had taken "reasonable efforts" to find other options.
Some advocates have told RNZ it has led to survivors of sexual or domestic violence being turned away from emergency housing because their decision to leave their situation was seen as "contributing" to their homelessness.
MSD has disputed this has been the case, but Potaka said he had made his expectations clear to officials regardless.
"You cannot turn people away as a result of contributing to the circumstances because they are victims of sexual or domestic violence," Potaka said.
"That is not a legitimate reason to turn people away from progressing through an emergency housing application process."
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