By Fred Borman
14 July 2026
Internal
documents obtained by TVNZ under the Official Information
Act and publicly reported last month, revealed that New
Zealand’s Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is
systematically denying emergency housing to people in dire
and desperate circumstances.
A letter sent to regional
managers within MSD explained that their job performance
would be graded based on whether they met the government’s
“reduction targets” for the number of people receiving
unemployment benefits and the number receiving emergency
housing support.
When it took office at the end of
2023, the National Party-led government set a target to
reduce the number of people in temporary emergency housing
by 75 percent. The number of households in state-funded
emergency housing, typically motels, dropped from 3,141 in
December 2023 to 471 two years later.
Reducing access
to emergency housing is one component of a sweeping
austerity program designed to make the working class pay for
the increasingly severe economic downturn, exacerbated by
the ongoing, illegal US war against Iran.
The
government does not keep records of where people go once
they leave emergency housing, or when they are denied access
to it, but numerous organisations have highlighted an
increasing number of people living on the
street.
Helen Robinson, chief executive of the
Auckland City Mission, told TVNZ that the instructions from
MSD meant that “decision makers are incentivised to say
no” to people who need housing.
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Jill Hawkey, who
runs the Christchurch Methodist Mission, said the
performance targets created a “perverse incentive to
actually keep people out of emergency housing,” adding:
“I don’t think anybody should be rewarded for denying
somebody their human right to shelter, and that’s
essentially what’s happening.”
There are
indications that hundreds, possibly thousands of homeless
people have been turned away. TVNZ reported that, according
to MSD’s call logging system, “For 16 months in a row,
there were over 1,000 more initial inquiries to MSD about
emergency housing per month than official applications that
were subsequently submitted.”
Under MSD’s
policies, staff have the power to deny someone emergency
housing if they are deemed to have “contributed” to
their own situation by moving out of previous accommodation
“without a good reason” or because they “damaged the
property” or did not follow the landlord’s
“rules.”
In response to TVNZ’s revelations,
Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka told Radio NZ (RNZ)
that he was not across “the detail” of MSD’s
performance management and that the matter was “the
purview of the chief executive” of the Ministry, Debbie
Power. Potaka also falsely asserted that “in Auckland,
homelessness and rough sleeping has reduced
considerably.”
Robinson said she had “never seen
this scale of homelessness in my 13 years. There are
literally hundreds of people who are rough sleeping here in
Auckland.” A survey by Auckland Council found that the
numbers of people living without shelter in the city had
more than doubled between September 2024 and September 2025
from 426 to 940. In January 2026 the number dropped to 706
people.
Asked by TVNZ if MSD had created incentives
for staff to deny legitimate requests, Potaka conceded: “I
can see that that’s one interpretation reasonable people
can have.”
Chief executive Power, meanwhile,
defended the letter sent to MSD managers, telling RNZ on
July 3: “These… are targets that the government has
given us to achieve, and so, of course they are part of our
performance suite of what we’re expecting our staff to
achieve.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told a
media conference on June 29 that Potaka had done “an
exceptionally good job getting kids out of emergency housing
and into permanent, warm, dry homes”—even though there
is no record of where people who leave emergency housing, or
are denied access to it, end up.
Expressing the ruling
class’s contempt and indifference, Luxon also told the
media he was unaware that there is no night shelter for
homeless people in Auckland, a fact that has been widely
commented on in the media.
In a further indication of
the worsening crisis, RNZ reported on July 9: “Data from
Health New Zealand shows the number of homeless people being
hospitalised has doubled in six years… from just under a
thousand in 2018/19 to close to 2000 in
2024/25.”
The denial of emergency housing goes
hand-in-hand with the government’s plan to give police
sweeping new powers to criminalise the very homelessness it
is creating. It intends to pass legislation that will
empower police to issue “move on” orders against people
as young as 14 who are begging, rough sleeping, or
attempting to “inhabit a public place.” Those who breach
an order face fines of $2,000 or three months’
imprisonment.
The government’s intensified austerity
measures will make the situation worse. Its May budget
included an increase in rents for 84,000 public housing
tenants, reduced access to emergency grants for food and
other essential costs, and foreshadowed 8,700 public sector
jobs. Thousands of unemployed teenagers are also being
pushed off welfare benefits, while youth unemployment is
above 17 percent.
Meanwhile, the government is pouring
$477 million into prisons, with the prison population having
surged from 9,508 to 11,255 in two years. Unemployed youth
will be pushed into the armed forces as the government, with
the opposition Labour Party’s support, amid moves to
double military spending from 1.2 to 2 percent of GDP in
preparation to join imperialist wars.
The Labour Party
has responded to the MSD scandal with promises of a more
humane policy to address homelessness. At Labour’s annual
congress on June 28, leader Chris Hipkins declared that
“houses should be homes first, investments second” and
pledged to deliver “a fair go for everyone.”
These
statements must be judged against Labour’s record. The
2017–2023 Labour-Greens coalition government—which
included the right-wing NZ First in the first three
years—was elected with promises to end child poverty,
solve the housing crisis and end homelessness. The reality
was the opposite.
The number of children living in
“material hardship” increased from 135,000 in 2017 to
143,700 by 2023.
On housing, Labour’s record was one
of broken promises. The flagship Kiwibuild policy, which
promised 100,000 “affordable” homes, delivered just over
2,300 by 2024—built in collaboration with private
developers and sold at market rates beyond the reach of
working class families.
Census figures confirm that
homelessness rose sharply under Labour. The number of people
in “severe housing deprivation” increased from 99,462 in
2018 to 112,496 in 2023—2.3 percent of the population.
Those living without shelter surged by more than a third,
from 3,624 to 4,965.
In 2023 Hipkins, then prime
minister, ruled out any increase in tax on the wealth
hoarded by the country’s billionaires and
multi-millionaires. Labour campaigned in the election that
year on cutting spending and reducing public sector jobs. It
lost in a landslide, its support almost halved from 50
percent to 26.9 percent.
Whoever wins the November
election, the crisis will continue to deepen. Whatever
tweaks a Labour government makes around the edges of the
emergency housing policy will not fundamentally alter the
ruling class’s program of austerity and war. The working
class can only defend its interests by building its own
party, independent of all the capitalist parties, based on a
socialist and internationalist program that fights to put an
end to the capitalist system that produces poverty,
homelessness and
war.
