Statistics New Zealand defines a homeless person as one
who does not have a secure, safe, habitable and private place to live.
This includes not just people living on the streets, but
those in temporary accommodation, such as a boarding house or a camping ground,
or sharing housing, such as sleeping on friends' couches.
Living in an uninhabitable house, without water or power,
also counts as homelessness.
Until 2009, there was no definition of who was homeless in
New Zealand and there are still no reliable regular national figures.
Far from the stereotype of the grizzled man sleeping on the
street, more than half of New Zealand's homeless were under 25, and a quarter
were children. Most lived temporarily with friends or family, squeezed into
living-rooms or garages, rather than on the streets.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9200891/Being-homeless-hits-children-hard
his country's
homelessness rate is estimated to be one in every 120 people.
Wellington mayor Celia
Wade-Brown said homelessness could happen to anyone, not just men sleeping
rough.
She said women and
children were also finding themselves in that situation and people arrived to
the predicament in a variety of ways.
"There are people
with addictions and problems but there are also people who have left their
flats because they're scared of domestic violence."
An Auckland organisation working with homeless people says the number of people coming to them for help has doubled in the past six months.
People under the age
of 24 make up 46% of the homeless population, according to government
statistics.
In May, a group of
homeless organisations were brought together by the Auckland Council to discuss
challenges and look at possible solutions to help young homeless people.
The general manager of
LifeWise, Corie Haddock, says there's been a big increase in general in the
past six months.
"Historically, we
used to on average have about 60 people a month. That's now climbed in the last
three to six months to about 120 a month. On the streets of Auckland clearly
there's an increase in youth homelessness and there's a number of reasons
behind that."
Mr Haddock said some
of those issues include a lack of support when people turn 17, problems around
synthetic cannabis use and the region's housing crisis.
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