We will not solve homelessness with fines. We will simply push people further from the help they rely on one quiet instruction at a time.
That is why the government’s proposal to expand police move-on powers, including fines of up to $2000 for non-compliance, deserves scrutiny here, not just in Wellington.
It forces a choice about what we do when hardship lands in public view: do we respond with enforcement, or with the support that makes it possible to move forward?
As proposed, police could more readily direct people to leave public spaces for behaviours associated with begging or rough sleeping, and punish those who do not.
Some see it as restoring safety and order; others see it as disrupting the fragile routines that keep people connected to food, healthcare, case workers, and each other without changing the conditions that put them there.
In Otago, you can hear both arguments, sometimes in the same conversation.
Dunedin has had its own reminder. The tents at Kensington Oval moved the issue into the open. When the camp dispersed, hardship did not end: it scattered into cars, bush edges, and more isolated corners, where it is harder for outreach teams to find people and harder for people to find help.
That is the point: moving people is not the same as fixing the problem.
Locally, hundreds experience severe housing deprivation each year, sleeping rough in vehicles, tents, or other makeshift situations.
Our large and cyclical student population adds further nuance to the homelessness in our city of busy public spaces, tight rentals, and different expectations about who belongs where.
As organisations who work directly with people facing housing insecurity, what we see is the support gap.
Demand for mental healthcare, addiction services, income advocacy, and consistent casework still outstrips what is available, especially for people with complex needs.
So when we talk about ‘‘moving people on’’, we should ask: where to and who will they be connected to when they get there?
In a regional city, being pushed out of the centre often means being pushed away from the people and places that keep you afloat: the meal provider who knows your name, the GP clinic you can reach on foot, the outreach worker who checks in, the community nurse, the library where you can sit safely, the friend who tells you where the van will be tonight.
Dunedin does not have endless services in every direction.
For many, the hardest part is not only a roof. It is the absence of stable social support — no whānau contact, no trusted adults, no reliable clinician, no case manager, no safe place to decompress.
When you are already alone, being told to move on can become a policy of isolation.
To Otago’s credit, there is real ongoing collaboration in council, community providers and government working together, improving outreach and co-ordination.
Dunedin’s move towards dedicated homelessness outreach is a step in the right direction: people do not change because they are threatened; they change because someone sticks with them, consistently, long enough to rebuild trust and a plan.
But goodwill cannot substitute for a functioning support system. What is missing is sustained funding for wraparound services, mental health and addiction care, outreach, supported employment, culturally grounded support, and income navigation plus enough stable places to live so that support has somewhere to land.
When those supports are thin, enforcement becomes a stand-in for care. So this is not only a policing debate. It is a systems test.
Research here and overseas is clear: enforcement may shift people short-term, but it rarely reduces homelessness long-term.
The responses that reliably create exits are support-led: accessible healthcare, addiction treatment, income support, and ongoing case management that helps people stabilise alongside housing.
None of this dismisses the concerns of retailers, residents, and visitors who want town centres that feel safe. Public spaces matter.
The question is whether ‘‘order’’ can do the job of healthcare, income support, outreach, and a social safety net or whether it simply makes the most vulnerable people harder to reach.
If we treat homelessness as a visibility problem, success becomes ‘‘fewer people seen’’ not ‘‘fewer people without homes’’.
In Otago, where hardship is often already out of sight, move-on powers risk locking in a quiet cycle: disperse, hide, repeat.
So the local question is not simply whether move-on orders exist. It is whether they will make any real difference while social support remains stretched and inconsistent and while the services that help people stabilise are still concentrated in a few places.
Are we responding to homelessness as nuisance behaviour or as a predictable outcome of shortages, poverty, and unmet health needs?
How we answer will shape not only our streets, but our sense of who belongs in them, especially when the alternative is nowhere.
- David McKenzie is the manager of the Dunedin Night Shelter; Melanie McNatty is the general manager of Catholic Social Services; Nicole Devereux is general manager of Family Works, Presbyterian Support Otago.
