time for radical change

Sleeping rough - there is no glamour in this, it isn't cool or street - it is difficult, lonely, cold, wet, dangerous, intimidating, isolating, destructive and for many a final destination after choices are gone.

Waatea News

As winter bites, the Auckland City Mission says it has identified a record 200-plus rough sleepers around the central city, more than half of them Maori.

Yep HALF of them are Māori!!! Homeless in their own land. Discarded by many. Literally hand to mouth survival.

The new Auckland city missioner, Chris Farelly says the figure stands as further evidence that not only is Auckland experiencing a housing crisis, but that those living at the furthest extremes of poverty are suffering the most. 

He says the longer someone sleeps rough, the harder it can be to transition into living a normal life.

Yep the normal ain't normal anymore. And we have also had the news that

New statistics reveal Māori home ownership has plummeted in the past 27 years, with the rate in some parts of the North Island dropping by as much as 40 percent.
The report from Statistics New Zealand said, since 1986, the average drop in the ownership rate was 20 percent for Māori, compared with 15 percent for the total population.
"In the worst hit areas for Māori, declines in home ownership were close to 40 percent and that was in the Whangarei, southern Auckland, Tauranga, Rotorua and Hastings urban areas."
The number of Māori having to rent privately had risen dramatically, she said.
"It's increased by 88.3 percent since 1986, so we know that there's been that large increase in Māori living in private rentals as well as a fall in people living in owner-occupied dwellings and that compares with a fall for the total population of 42.7 percent."

The minister nick smith says

"The fact that our Maori and Pacific people have lower rates of home ownership is just a broader reflection of the fact that they tend to have lower educational achievement, that they have lower incomes, and that translates itself into housing."

Yep cos uz Maaori r dum eh - what an dickhead smith is - a person who is pretending there are no housing issues, a minister so out of touch that every time he comes on the telly he reminds us of how inadequate, out of his league, and useless he is. He isn't helping to solve any housing problems - he is just trying to protect his very exposed arse, and it is exposed because he is ineffectual.

We DO NOT deserve this useless government with its apathetic ministers, we deserve better.