Tauranga-Moana is a vibrant community but people are doing it tough. Finding a safe, warm, dry, affordable home is becoming out of reach for many.
A cross-party homelessness inquiry launched by Labour, Green and Maori parties found late last year homelessness in New Zealand is at the highest levels in recent memory and continuing to grow. The report calls for more state housing stock; more affordable houses; reduced building costs and tackling speculation in the property market.
Jan Tinetti Principal of Merivale Primary – Tauranga’s only decile one school, spends a lot of her day dealing with the effects of homelessness and the impact this has on her student’s education.
Tinetti says some of her students go through three or four schools in a year, and one family didn’t enrol their children for four weeks because they had no home. She says homelessness affects not just learning and behaviour, but health, too.
“The Labour Party has a fresh approach when it comes to housing and addressing poverty, and that’s why I’m standing for Labour in Tauranga.”, Tinetti says.
The Labour Candidate for Bay of Plenty Angie Warren-Clark, is also the Manager of Tauranga Women’s Refuge and works with families of all backgrounds.
“I see the hardship that our families go through daily here in Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty” Warren-Clark says. “The women and their kids who come to Refuge are struggling to find safe and appropriate accommodation and they do not have the resources to take care of their families.”
Warren-Clark says “at Women’s Refuge vulnerable women and their families aren’t able to access emergency and social housing until they are evicted from our safe house. This is not the New Zealand I know and that’s why I’ve put my hand up for Labour in the Bay of Plenty.”
By Jan Tinetti and Angie Warren-Clark
We write for this magazine to talk about the things that are important to our community.
