Appeals to Guilt and Pity

Auckland's Phoney Homeless Make $100 a Day on the Streets  

Amanda Saxton
Stuff

[In our public-welfarist society, the avenues and pathways to get help are both numerous and ubiquitous.  For some, living on the streets is a hard-core lifestyle choice.  But it only works if people walking by are moved by guilt and pity.  It seems like plenty of people are. Ed.]

Every morning, a group of men gather in downtown Auckland. Half of them aren't homeless, but they act like it.

Auckland Council has announced it will count the city's rough sleepers to fully grasp the scale of homelessness. We took to the streets to learn about those on society's edge in the city's centre, whose current way of life the council hopes to eliminate.  Before sunrise, every morning, a group of men gather in downtown Auckland. They've been doing this since before the SkyTower was built in the 1990s. One's lost a leg in that time.

The quartet make chairs out of bread crates cushioned with cardboard boxes and play Fleetwood Mac via a bluetooth speaker.  Someone always drops off a bag of day-old meat pies just after 7am. Buddies the men consider brothers walk past, getting fist bumps and a pie if they're lucky. A dishevelled, jittery old fella named Joseph staggers over and slips $20 to one of the seated men.

Mark Phillip, Sole Johnstone, Kenny Dahl and a rough sleeping friend spend their mornings on Victoria St, in downtown Auckland, hustling passersby and swigging beer.

Its recipient – Mark Phillip – carefully moves two cans of Kingfisher beer from under his hoody to behind his bread crate, stands up, and sets off for the convenience store across the road.  "Joseph can't buy beer there 'cause he's been trespassed," Phillip explains, upon his return. "So one of us goes, and charges for 'gas money'."  When asked if it isn't a bit harsh to take money from a visibly struggling friend, Phillip winks.  "It's a tax, it's one of my hustles – it's what we do out here," he says.

By 8.30am the men are wasted.

Faux Homelessness in New Zealand

One Man's Trash . . . 

Redefining categories to create sensational headlines--and (temporarily) further one's career--are stock in trade for those wanting to make a name for themselves.  In New Zealand, it seems that for some reason a good number of these "wannabes" come out of Otago University and are associated with "health research".  Maybe it's something in the water down there.

The latest example is Dr Kate Amore who has been busy telling us that 41,000 people in New Zealand are homeless.  How does Dr Amore define "homeless"?  So broadly that a university student, living in a swanky hall of residence is regarded as being without a home.

Here is Dr Amore's breakdown of the homeless:

If the homeless population were a hundred people, 70 are staying with extended family or friends in severely crowded houses, 20 are in a motel, boarding house or camping ground, and 10 are living on the street, in cars, or in other improvised dwellings. They all urgently need affordable housing. [Otago University Media Release]

Seventy percent of the "homeless" population are not living on the street, sleeping rough.  They are in houses.  But these houses are not their own: they are living with relatives, boarding with friends, etc. But Dr Amore proclaims that these folk are all living in "severely crowded houses".  How does she know?