A person sitting hunched on the pavement, arms round their knees, with a small cardboard sign asking for money for a hot drink or to feed a family. Just drop your coins in the cup over there.
Can this really be happening in New Zealand?
Kiwis travelling overseas in the past were often shocked to see city streets in Europe and North America acting as home for dozens of panhandlers, begging sometimes aggressively for spare change.
Until about 10 or 15 years ago, visible homelessness was rare in New Zealand cities. Back then, you were most likely to see people living on the streets in Auckland, a problem which has got considerably worse there over the past decade. But in Dunedin it was an extremely unusual sight before about 2017.
Now, on any day, homeless folk are sleeping rough and/or begging on the city’s main George St-Princes St thoroughfare. It would be unusual to walk south from Frederick St down to Dowling St and not come across at least a few people asking for money or huddling under awnings against the elements.
As the colder months of the year hove into view, life is about to become even more miserable for some of our most vulnerable residents.
We’ve all heard that somewhat convenient story which circulates suggesting that many homeless people choose to live on the streets even though they have been offered accommodation elsewhere. That may indeed be the case for a few, but for the majority these Kiwis have little or no alternative. There just isn’t enough housing.
Homelessness is a highly complex social problem, involving poverty, addiction, abuse and family violence, and mental health issues. It has become worse in this past decade as a consequence of less cheap housing being available, the higher cost of living, the Covid-19 pandemic, looser family connections and less mental health and addiction support.
Anyway, no need to worry — the government has a plan. It’s a stunning one-size-fits-all approach that appears not to discriminate between the genuine rough sleepers and the aggressive panhandlers who threaten the public. Instead, that differentiation will be left to police officers on the beat, as if they don’t already have enough to deal with.
On Sunday, the government announced it was pursuing its intention to give police the power to issue "move-on orders" to those over 14 behaving in a disorderly, disruptive or threatening manner, or obstructing entry to a business, or breaching the peace.
The orders would also be used against those begging, people sleeping rough and anyone intending to inhabit a public area.
The government’s scheme is that the offender would need to leave that area for up to 24 hours and move a "reasonable" distance from it, as determined by the police officer. If the order is breached the homeless person could be fined up to $2000 — got any spare $100 notes, anyone? — or jailed for up to three months.
While we understand the potential effects of belligerent beggars on businesses’ bottom-lines, and fully support the police protecting them and removing anyone who is being intimidating to staff or customers, this catch-all policy is rather cruel punishment.
Where will the people moved on actually go? That’s the obvious question and one there isn’t any heartening answer to. There’s a range of proverbs which could be applied to this government proposal, involving head and sand, sweeping and carpets, and kicking and cans.
And haven’t the police just backed off responding to mental health callouts and what they can trigger to instead refocus on core duties? How can they be expected to effectively add the shepherding of the homeless to their already overloaded daily responsibilities, including giving advice on where the person could go?
Protect businesses by all means. But this is a very poor attempt by the government to "fix" an extremely deep-seated problem, a PR exercise to make them look good, as if they are doing something about it all.
