Families living in tree huts as New Zealand housing crisis bites

A 30% rise in people waiting for state housing in Northland region fuels country’s ‘desperate’ shortage in affordable homes.

New Zealand government MPs have heard that the housing situation in Northland has become so desperate some families are living in the woods, in huts built in the forks of trees.

Northland is one of the most deprived regions of the country, with a median income of NZ$23,400. The population is also 32% Māori – double that of the rest of the country.

At a housing hui (meeting) held in Whangarei on Thursday, the Māori affairs minister, Nanaia Mahuta, who is also associate minister of housing, was told by local housing advocates that the shortage of affordable housing had become “desperate” in the north island region, with families forced to live in trees, self-built huts, old vehicles, lean-tos, derelict houses and carports

QLife – LGBTQI peer support at Christmas

During Christmas and New Year, we often see a large spike in family get-togethers and late-night parties. Thinking about keeping safe and tapping into support services like Qlife is always a beneficial idea at this difficult time.  The Open Doors Alcohol and Other Drug support team have been having some fun testing out some AOD messages on TikTok, getting young people ready for the holiday break!  Check it out here… 

QLife provides anonymous and free LGBTI peer support and referral for people in Australia wanting to talk about sexuality, identity, gender, bodies, feelings or relationships.

https://qlife.org.au/

‘Everyone just wants to be loved’: the New Zealand barber helping cut domestic violence

There are the hardened criminals. The patched gang members. The older men who watched their father beat their mother before turning on them. The young boys whose mothers drink and tell them they are unwanted. The alcoholics, the drug addicts, the gamblers.

They all take their seat in New Zealand barber Matt Brown’s chair. And they talk. And Brown listens, offers advice and support where he can and, hopefully, help his customers turn their lives around.

“I am a good listener,” says Brown. “I cut their hair, and I listen. It’s my greatest gift as a barber.”

Indigenous residents seeking ‘humane’ housing take fight to supreme court

Residents of a remote Indigenous community near Alice Springs are taking a legal fight about the right to “humane” housing to the supreme court, in a case that could prompt widespread housing reform in the Northern Territory.

They are also arguing that rental agreements struck in the wake of the Northern Territory intervention are invalid and are seeking the return of rental payments.

The case concerns two residents of the remote community of Santa Teresa, an Arrernte community about 80km south-east of Alice Springs.

The plaintiffs, Enid Young and Robert Conway, were among a shortlist of four who represented more than 70 households in Santa Teresa in a successful class action against the department of housing in the Northern Territory civil and administrative tribunal (NTCAT) in February.

‘Giving up size for proximity’: Australia’s newly-built houses are the smallest they’ve been in 17 years

Australia’s newly built homes are the smallest they have been in 17 years, while new apartments are getting slightly bigger, research shows.

Homes are now 1.3 per cent smaller than they were a year ago, averaging 228.8 square metres. This is the smallest they’ve been since 2001-2002.

Technology increases sense of safety for domestic violence victims

Two Social Policy Research Centre studies have looked at ways to keep women safe in their homes.

Personal duress alarms (PDA) and security cameras could help people experiencing domestic and family violence (DFV) stay safe in their homes, according to UNSW research.

The Evaluation of the technology trial (Keeping Women Safe in Their Homes) report by the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) found that the provision of technology may assist with an improved responsiveness by police, and increased accountability of perpetrators.

‘We’re screwed’: the New Zealanders left stranded in Australia

They change countries to take up new jobs. But when these fall through or they can no longer work, thousands are finding there’s no safety net to catch them.

It was more than a decade after Hana* moved to Australia from New Zealand that she discovered there wasn’t a social safety net to catch her.

The single mother moved to Queensland in 2008 for work, and has worked multiple jobs over the last 11 years to support her two children.

“Life looked great,” she says. “We’d go out for meals and buy clothes and lived a great life. But that was all taken away unexpectedly.”

Just over a year ago Hana witnessed a suicide while working as a social worker. She has been diagnosed with severe PTSD, depression and anxiety by psychiatrists and doctors, and has medical certificates confirming she will be unable to work in the near future.

But when she turned to Centrelink for support while waiting for an application for the disability support pension, Hana discovered that she was ineligible for virtually all forms of welfare, including sickness allowance, because she is in Australia on a special category visa (SCV), which allows New Zealand citizens to live in Australia indefinitely without obtaining permanent residency or citizenship.

The solution to our housing crisis is deceptively simple – we need to build more houses

Times are tough. People are having trouble finding secure work, the housing crisis is reaching new heights and the realities of climate change are starting to be felt across the country. Most concerningly, trust in our political system is at an all-time low, as voters feel increasingly disconnected and let down by the people who are supposed to give them hope.

We need to look back to the Great Depression to find a time when the Australian public faced challenges of this scale – and also to find policy solutions that have the potential to inspire hope and trust in our system once more.

There is one important idea that might hold the key to solving our current problems: the nation-building project.

We often throw the term around when discussing the big infrastructure investments. But it is not just infrastructure spending that defines a nation-building project. While these large-scale developments are essential, the other two criteria that fall under this category are job creation and a solution to a policy problem.

Indigenous mothers losing child custody due to housing policy failure, report says

Research finds children are ending up in out-of-home care simply because they don’t have a safe place to stay.

Indigenous women and children have so few ways to escape domestic and family violence that mothers are losing custody of their children simply because they don’t have a safe place to stay.

New research has found Indigenous women are losing their children to the out-of-home-care system “through no fault of their own, but rather as a consequence of systemic failures in housing policy and availability.”

There is such a disconnect between housing, Centrelink and child protection services that “the familial and cultural continuity of Indigenous people is at risk,” the latest Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) study has found.

New Plan to End Street Homelessness