Plans to introduce a rough sleeping ban to push whānau experiencing homelessness out of the city centre will have serious and potentially fatal consequences.

If the Government moves forward with a “rough sleeping ban”, the impact will be felt immediately, people who have nowhere else to go will be driven from the city centre and forced to take shelter in more dangerous and unsafe environments, or risk being criminalized for having no access to housing.

Kick Back is specifically concerned about the impact that such a ban will have on our Tamariki and rangatahi who are experiencing homelessness. Tamariki and rangatahi who have been denied access to shelter, and as a result are being forced to sleep outside, often find themselves coming into the city centre because visibility and community provides a level of protection.

“It’s important that we acknowledge that the increased visibility of whānau and rangatahi sleeping rough is a direct result of political decisions our Government has made,” warned Aaron Hendry, Kick Back’s co-founder and General Manager, “The reason we are seeing more of our people sleeping outside on our streets is because this Government made the decision to increase barriers to Emergency Housing, they decided to stall and stop Public Housing build projects across the country and have put pressure on Kāinga Ora to increase evictions. They've cut millions tagged to housing rangatahi experiencing homelessness and gutted the Homelessness action plan while also weakening renter’s rights and strengthening our landlord’s power to evict whānau without cause.

We need to be clear that there is already a solution to prevent rough sleeping in our major city centres. It is for the Government to protect and uphold our people's most basic right to housing.”

Kick Back is calling on the Government to #BinTheBan and instead:

• commit to implementing #Duty2Assist legislation (to ensure that rangatahi and whānau get access to Emergency Housing when they need it)
• work with the community to scale the solutions that exist within our community and to invest in developing an Immediate Housing and Crisis response system to replace motel based accommodation and ensure that none of our tamariki, rangatahi or whānau ever have to sleep on our streets
• commit to investing in scaling up Public Housing and work with the community to open up access to long term, safe and sustainable housing for our Tamariki, rangatahi and whānau.

“If the Government goes ahead with this ban, what they will be doing is criminalizing whānau for sleeping on the streets as a result of the political decisions they themselves have made to deny people shelter!”, say’s Aaron, “Our whānau experiencing homelessness are not the problem, the problem is that we have human beings who are forced to sleep outside because they have been denied access to their most basic human right to housing! Homelessness is a direct consequences of the political choices our political leaders have made over decades, political choices which have seen housing commodified, and the financial interests of investors and landlords elevated over our people’s most basic human need to access a safe and stable home.”

Kick Back believes fiercely that homelessness is a problem we can solve, but we need to stop attacking unhoused people and start making different political choices. Choices that show value for people over profit, and put our whānau, our rangatahi and our tamariki at the centre.

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