Verna Ohia-Gate says the increase of building homes in the Welcome Bay area should include emergency housing. Photo: RNZ/Justine Murray
Te Tuinga Whānau assist forty families a week to find a home.
At the helm of the Trust is Tommy Wilson who said the perception of homelessness varies.
“There’s four different categories of street livers, there’s the homeless some of them are pop up beggars and make about $200 a day and don’t really want to change, there’s the rough sleepers which we have a night shelter in Tauranga for, and then there’s the ones who need emergency housing, that’s our core sector.”
Te Tuinga Whanau have helped 40 families move into 12 of the truss emergency homes and other families into hotel rooms.
“Seventy percent of our whanau that haven’t got a home are working. Some couples make $800 a week but when you’ve got to pay $500 [for a rental] and you have six kids, you have got no show of getting a flat"
At a recent conference in Tauranga called Reconnecting the Disconnected, Te Tuinga Whanau invited a range of organisations to talk through issues of rising homelessness in the region.
The Ministry of Social Development, local police, social workers and volunteers shared their experiences and discussed what needs to be done.
Delwyn Rowan says 90 percent of the people she helps on the streets suffer from addiction and mental health problems. Photo: RNZ/Justine Murray
Social worker Delwyn Rowan said that 90 percent of the people she helps suffer from addiction and there’s a lack of support for them.
“There needs to be more mobile mental health people to see the mahi (work) that we do, and connect. Because it’s a shocking plight upon our society …the hardest thing I come across is this synthetic drugs, it’s a curse.”
Rowan works for Saint Peters House in Tauranga as a social worker who targets the hard-to-reach homeless who live on the fringes of the city.
“I’m not allowed to go to some of the places by myself …once a week I go to the streets and connect with the guys who come in for a meal, I always have food [and blankets] on me, and sometimes it’s just sitting with them and having a kōrero.”
Tommy Wilson is the CEO of Te Tuinga Whanau Trust, formed 27 years ago by the Māori Womens Welfare League. Photo: RNZ/Justine Murray
Verna Ohia-Gate is chair of the Welcome Bay community hall and has seen the rise of homeless people in the suburb.
It’s hard to turn them away, but it’s really hard to know where to send them to as well, we had a young family with a baby panicking because they’ve got no whare we directed them to the emergency housing at Papamoa luckily they had a spare home there.”
Verna said that there was a need for Māori landowners to be more aware of the rise of homelessness in Tauranga and the solution should not always lie with Government organisations.
“Most of the land out at Welcome Bay is in Kiwifruit, my kōrero to landowners is how come it is all kiwifruit and you haven’t allocated [land] for whanau whare [housing] or papakainga, I know some of our family who are beneficiaries to that whenua are homeless.” She said.
Verna intends on connecting with key agencies to set up emergency housing in Welcome Bay.
He Korowai Trust CEO Ricky Houghton set up successful affordable housing schemes in the North and has turned the former Kaitaia Hotel into emergency housing. A scheme that Tommy Wilson wants to emulate.
“Our dream is to have a village in place most of our time is visiting the families in those different residences and motel rooms, but we want to create a village, like Ricky has done up North.”
CEO of He Korowai Trust was in Tauranga recently to talk about social services and housing in the Far North. Photo: RNZ/Justine Murray
