Learn more about the problem as well as the solutions for homelessness both here and across the globe.

As you are here, we hope that you are interested in learning more about homelessness, understanding the problem and being part of the solution. This isn’t a new problem, nor is it something that will be solved easily. It will take all of us working together to solve the problem through lots of different ways. The pathways to homelessness are numerous and complex.

We recognise that there are many people and organsations that have and are still working towards ending homelessness. We want to support them and be part of new, effective initiatives to help end homelessness. We welcome you to join us and that’s why we are asking people to pledge to end homelessness so we can connect with you, share what we have learned and strengthen the work that is helping solve the problem.

If you would like to sign the pledge click here

If you are already working to end homelessness, we’d love to find out more about what you are doing, please connect with our team at Home Foundation here

Make your neighbourhood a village and connect with the people who live close to you.

If we want to live in a strong community, we have to build it together. Numerous studies have found that people live longer and healthier lives when they are connected in their neighbourhood, because when we strip away the distractions of our modern society our nature is still to help someone when we see they are in need. That helping hand might be the difference between your neighbour staying in their home or losing it.

What does being a good neighbour look like?
Introduce yourself to your neighbours when you move in, and introduce yourself to neighbours when they move in. Stop for a chat when you see a neighbour walking by or out in their garden. Share fruit and vegetables with people on your street. Pay it forward at your local coffee shop. Join a neighbourhood group such as Neighbourhood Support or Neighbourly

Grow food and meet people in your neighbourhood, whilst you help save the planet.

The only thing better than growing your own food, is growing food with others and eating it together. Community or urban gardens are in cities right across New Zealand. They are set up by lots of different groups, some by community groups, some supported by the local council, see Auckland Teaching Gardens others are created by specialised, local organisations, for example The Green Lab or Good Neighbour. If you would like to find a garden in your area, contact your local council or if you see one in your neighbourhood contact them directly.

If you can’t find a community garden in your neighbourhood, you could always start your own. Talk to your local councillor and find out if you can get some suitable space. Ask if there are organisations where you live that can give guidance and support you. Talk to your neighbours and friends to form a core group that will put their green fingers to work.

Organisations in your area are helping people to go from being homeless to having a permanent home. Help them help more people.

Community Housing Aotearoa gives the following definition of community housing:

Community housing is a form of social housing working alongside private housing in the open market. Typically these are not-for-profit groups meeting housing need through a range of social and affordable rental and home ownership options. They provide an alternative to the public housing provided by Kāinga Ora (formerly known as Housing New Zealand) and local authority housing.

Community Housing Aotearoa has 75 member providers who house approximately 37,000 people nationally across 18,500 homes.

A Community Housing Provider (CHP) is an independent organisation and each will seek support in different ways. To find out how to donate time, money or resources to a CHP, contact them directly.
You can also find CHP’s registered with the Community Housing Regulatory Authority

Spend your free time and energy to build or renovate a house for a low-income family.

Since its inception on a farm in Georgia, USA in the late 1960s, Habitat for Humanity has provided affordable housing for hundreds of thousands low income families all over the world. In New Zealand there are lots of ways to support the work they do. As an individual you can donate money, volunteer on a house building or renovating project or volunteer in one of their ReStores located in towns and cities across both the South and North Islands. Businesses can also donate labour, resources or cash. To find out more go to Habitat NZ.

Housing First is a proven approach to ending homelessness. You can learn more from the person who formed this approach, Dr Sam Tsemberis in his TedTalk from 2012. It prioritises providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness, without expecting them to have other areas of their life, such as work, money or health in a place where they are “housing ready”. The belief is that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before they can genuinely sort those other areas of their life.

The first Housing First collective in New Zealand was Housing First Auckland, which was launched in 2017 and there are other collectives in other cities in Aotearoa. Why not contact one local to you to find out how you can support them?

Give security of tenure and affordable rent fees.

Perhaps the first thing you can do to be a good landlord is to consider your motivation for renting out your property. A property that isn’t your home is an investment and one that you will want to make a profit from, but you are also providing a home for another person or family, so how can you make this a safe and secure home for them?

In the last 20 years, the median weekly rents in NZ have increased at a much higher rate than the median weekly incomes, which means over a third of tenants are having to pay up to 50% of their income on rent alone. Are you able to keep rent down on your property(ies) to a rate where a low-income household can afford to live there? Would you be prepared to give your tenants a long lease agreement so they have security of tenure? If they have children, would you give them an agreement that ensures they can stay there until their children have finished school?

The financialisation of property has added to the problem of homelessness. If you would like to know more about this, watch documentary The Push it’s available to watch through Vimeo or iTunes.

Building new homes will mean there is more housing stock available.

New Zealand has a housing shortage. The reality of this is that many people live in over-crowded, unhealthy and badly maintained houses because there is a lack of affordable, healthy homes either provided by the state or private sector.

If you are buying an investment property, consider buying a new home as you will be adding to our country’s stock and thus making more available to our growing population.

As it’s a shortage of affordable housing that our country suffers from, buy new houses that will meet the need – well designed, modern houses with a 6 Homestar or above rating that is located in an urban area.

There are City Missions in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

All city missions were established to serve and care for the most vulnerable in society. Many people know of them as being here to help feed the poor, through initiatives like soup kitchens, food banks and food parcels. But over the decades they have responded to the changing needs of people coming to them for help and they offer many more services such as: day programmes, financial advice, community groups, Community Services advocates, social work, residential and home-based detoxification services, counselling, life skills courses, running Op Shops and providing emergency housing.

You can support your local city mission by donating money, food or clothing they can give to those in need. You can raise money and awareness by holding fundraising events in your community or volunteering.

Each city mission has different range of services so get in touch with them or check out their website to see what help they are particularly looking for.

Let them know what you care about and ask them to make changes to help end homelessness.

It’s important that elected members know what we care about, so they can properly represent us in parliament. One of the simplest ways of telling them what you think is to write them a letter. It may seem old fashioned and of course you can always Tweet them as well, but a letter gives you space to lay out what you want to say and if enough people share concerns about the same thing, then they will have to take notice.

There are help and directions on how to contact an MP on Parliament’s website, here

If you are writing about homelessness, you might want to write to the current Minister for Housing, Megan Woods or one of her Associate Ministers.

Or if you would prefer to write to your local MP, you can find the MP for your electorate and let them know about an issue that concerns the area they represent.

When a social housing development comes to your neighbourhood, advocate for them.

Going back to the ‘It takes a village...’ point of view, it’s crucial that we are all part of building a society where everyone is welcome. There is a lot of misunderstanding and ignorance around social or community housing. The reality is that communities are richer the more open and diverse they are.

Of course we want to live in a neighbourhood where we feel safe and comfortable. Everyone wants that. By dismissing or even complaining about housing developments that are designed for low-income households, we are stopping people from benefitting from living as part of our community. Most people in affordable housing are hard-working, good people who are doing all that they can to provide for their family and make the most of what they have been given. Those that are living in social housing or a home provided by a Community Housing Provider, have professionals working with them to help them work along the housing continuum so they can one day be in a place to afford a permanent home without assistance.

If you are concerned about a new development in your area, find out who the developer is and ask them for more information or contact your local council who will have details from the consent process that the developers will have had to go through in order to build.

If you have financially benefited from housing capital growth consider using a percentage to end homelessness.

This one is a big ask, but it will also have a big impact. If you are a homeowner and you sell a property, you could commit to donating a percentage of the profit you have made on the sale to a charity that is working to end homelessness.

The median resale gain made by New Zealand house sellers in the June 2021 quarter was $347,500, with Wellington recording the highest median resale gain of $535,000. If those home owners donated just 1% of this profit to a charity that is working to end homelessness, it would make a huge difference to the homelessness problem. If you would like advice on charities that are doing great work to help people who are experiencing homelessness, you can contact the team at Home Foundation at info@homefoundation.org.nz

Remember, because it’s a charitable donation, you will be able to claim 33.33% of that amount back in your tax return – yours to keep or more to give!

Learn more about the problem as well as the solutions for homelessness both here and across the globe.

As you are here, we hope that you are interested in learning more about homelessness, understanding the problem and being part of the solution. This isn’t a new problem, nor is it something that will be solved easily. It will take all of us working together to solve the problem through lots of different ways. The pathways to homelessness are numerous and complex.

We recognise that there are many people and organsations that have and are still working towards ending homelessness. We want to support them and be part of new, effective initiatives to help end homelessness. We welcome you to join us and that’s why we are asking people to pledge to end homelessness so we can connect with you, share what we have learned and strengthen the work that is helping solve the problem.

If you would like to sign the pledge click here

If you are already working to end homelessness, we’d love to find out more about what you are doing, please connect with our team at Home Foundation here

Make your neighbourhood a village and connect with the people who live close to you.

If we want to live in a strong community, we have to build it together. Numerous studies have found that people live longer and healthier lives when they are connected in their neighbourhood, because when we strip away the distractions of our modern society our nature is still to help someone when we see they are in need. That helping hand might be the difference between your neighbour staying in their home or losing it.

What does being a good neighbour look like?
Introduce yourself to your neighbours when you move in, and introduce yourself to neighbours when they move in. Stop for a chat when you see a neighbour walking by or out in their garden. Share fruit and vegetables with people on your street. Pay it forward at your local coffee shop. Join a neighbourhood group such as Neighbourhood Support or Neighbourly

Grow food and meet people in your neighbourhood, whilst you help save the planet.

The only thing better than growing your own food, is growing food with others and eating it together. Community or urban gardens are in cities right across New Zealand. They are set up by lots of different groups, some by community groups, some supported by the local council, see Auckland Teaching Gardens others are created by specialised, local organisations, for example The Green Lab or Good Neighbour. If you would like to find a garden in your area, contact your local council or if you see one in your neighbourhood contact them directly.

If you can’t find a community garden in your neighbourhood, you could always start your own. Talk to your local councillor and find out if you can get some suitable space. Ask if there are organisations where you live that can give guidance and support you. Talk to your neighbours and friends to form a core group that will put their green fingers to work.

Organisations in your area are helping people to go from being homeless to having a permanent home. Help them help more people.

Community Housing Aotearoa gives the following definition of community housing:

Community housing is a form of social housing working alongside private housing in the open market. Typically these are not-for-profit groups meeting housing need through a range of social and affordable rental and home ownership options. They provide an alternative to the public housing provided by Kāinga Ora (formerly known as Housing New Zealand) and local authority housing.

Community Housing Aotearoa has 75 member providers who house approximately 37,000 people nationally across 18,500 homes.

A Community Housing Provider (CHP) is an independent organisation and each will seek support in different ways. To find out how to donate time, money or resources to a CHP, contact them directly.
You can also find CHP’s registered with the Community Housing Regulatory Authority

Spend your free time and energy to build or renovate a house for a low-income family.

Since its inception on a farm in Georgia, USA in the late 1960s, Habitat for Humanity has provided affordable housing for hundreds of thousands low income families all over the world. In New Zealand there are lots of ways to support the work they do. As an individual you can donate money, volunteer on a house building or renovating project or volunteer in one of their ReStores located in towns and cities across both the South and North Islands. Businesses can also donate labour, resources or cash. To find out more go to Habitat NZ.

Housing First is a proven approach to ending homelessness. You can learn more from the person who formed this approach, Dr Sam Tsemberis in his TedTalk from 2012. It prioritises providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness, without expecting them to have other areas of their life, such as work, money or health in a place where they are “housing ready”. The belief is that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before they can genuinely sort those other areas of their life.

The first Housing First collective in New Zealand was Housing First Auckland, which was launched in 2017 and there are other collectives in other cities in Aotearoa. Why not contact one local to you to find out how you can support them?

Give security of tenure and affordable rent fees.

Perhaps the first thing you can do to be a good landlord is to consider your motivation for renting out your property. A property that isn’t your home is an investment and one that you will want to make a profit from, but you are also providing a home for another person or family, so how can you make this a safe and secure home for them?

In the last 20 years, the median weekly rents in NZ have increased at a much higher rate than the median weekly incomes, which means over a third of tenants are having to pay up to 50% of their income on rent alone. Are you able to keep rent down on your property(ies) to a rate where a low-income household can afford to live there? Would you be prepared to give your tenants a long lease agreement so they have security of tenure? If they have children, would you give them an agreement that ensures they can stay there until their children have finished school?

The financialisation of property has added to the problem of homelessness. If you would like to know more about this, watch documentary The Push it’s available to watch through Vimeo or iTunes.

Building new homes will mean there is more housing stock available.

New Zealand has a housing shortage. The reality of this is that many people live in over-crowded, unhealthy and badly maintained houses because there is a lack of affordable, healthy homes either provided by the state or private sector.

If you are buying an investment property, consider buying a new home as you will be adding to our country’s stock and thus making more available to our growing population.

As it’s a shortage of affordable housing that our country suffers from, buy new houses that will meet the need – well designed, modern houses with a 6 Homestar or above rating that is located in an urban area.

There are City Missions in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

All city missions were established to serve and care for the most vulnerable in society. Many people know of them as being here to help feed the poor, through initiatives like soup kitchens, food banks and food parcels. But over the decades they have responded to the changing needs of people coming to them for help and they offer many more services such as: day programmes, financial advice, community groups, Community Services advocates, social work, residential and home-based detoxification services, counselling, life skills courses, running Op Shops and providing emergency housing.

You can support your local city mission by donating money, food or clothing they can give to those in need. You can raise money and awareness by holding fundraising events in your community or volunteering.

Each city mission has different range of services so get in touch with them or check out their website to see what help they are particularly looking for.

Let them know what you care about and ask them to make changes to help end homelessness.

It’s important that elected members know what we care about, so they can properly represent us in parliament. One of the simplest ways of telling them what you think is to write them a letter. It may seem old fashioned and of course you can always Tweet them as well, but a letter gives you space to lay out what you want to say and if enough people share concerns about the same thing, then they will have to take notice.

There are help and directions on how to contact an MP on Parliament’s website, here

If you are writing about homelessness, you might want to write to the current Minister for Housing, Megan Woods or one of her Associate Ministers.

Or if you would prefer to write to your local MP, you can find the MP for your electorate and let them know about an issue that concerns the area they represent.

When a social housing development comes to your neighbourhood, advocate for them.

Going back to the ‘It takes a village...’ point of view, it’s crucial that we are all part of building a society where everyone is welcome. There is a lot of misunderstanding and ignorance around social or community housing. The reality is that communities are richer the more open and diverse they are.

Of course we want to live in a neighbourhood where we feel safe and comfortable. Everyone wants that. By dismissing or even complaining about housing developments that are designed for low-income households, we are stopping people from benefitting from living as part of our community. Most people in affordable housing are hard-working, good people who are doing all that they can to provide for their family and make the most of what they have been given. Those that are living in social housing or a home provided by a Community Housing Provider, have professionals working with them to help them work along the housing continuum so they can one day be in a place to afford a permanent home without assistance.

If you are concerned about a new development in your area, find out who the developer is and ask them for more information or contact your local council who will have details from the consent process that the developers will have had to go through in order to build.

If you have financially benefited from housing capital growth consider using a percentage to end homelessness.

This one is a big ask, but it will also have a big impact. If you are a homeowner and you sell a property, you could commit to donating a percentage of the profit you have made on the sale to a charity that is working to end homelessness.

The median resale gain made by New Zealand house sellers in the June 2021 quarter was $347,500, with Wellington recording the highest median resale gain of $535,000. If those home owners donated just 1% of this profit to a charity that is working to end homelessness, it would make a huge difference to the homelessness problem. If you would like advice on charities that are doing great work to help people who are experiencing homelessness, you can contact the team at Home Foundation at info@homefoundation.org.nz

Remember, because it’s a charitable donation, you will be able to claim 33.33% of that amount back in your tax return – yours to keep or more to give!