Richard Northey’s writings as the Waitemat-a Local Board Chair in July’s Ponsonby News was no ‘news’.
The usual plodding and disappointing representation reflected a tired politician within a board whose masters are political parties and a council rather than its constituents. Waitemat-a Local Board has failed in a democratic potential we had been assured of within Auckland’s local government revamp. It is a rubber-stamping enterprise within a theatre of democracy.
For example, Northey completely ignores the distressed voices of many constituents over the brutal removal of trees from Western Springs Lakeside Te Wai Orea park. He dumps on their issues without acknowledging them. Like a grumpy principal be dismisses counter voices through “more than a decade of thought and local consultation on the matter”.
Citizens know all too well about Auckland Council consultation processes - a box ticking exercise within a process whose outcome is already decided. From mid-2018, a process invited consultation into this parks draft development plan and Grey Lynn Residents Association promoted it, “to improve the existing state of the park, without making any major changes”.
The Council promoted the following ‘key changes’: bird feeding, the promotion of eel feeding, forest footpaths and discussions on the hump bridge. Where was the catastrophic damage to the park as well documented in the Ponsonby News in this consultancy process? Indeed a case of not seeing the woods for the trees.
However, the most concerning feature of Northey’s PR dump was his expression of the local board’s, “active concern about continuing issues relating to homelessness and what are sometimes related antisocial and criminal behaviour in emergency accommodation and on the streets in the town centres in the Waitemat-a Board area.”
His response - “We have again written to the Government seeking the identification and appointment of a public agency to take the lead and ensure effective co-ordination and lasting solutions in this regard”.
These statements are appalling on many levels, primarily in demonising the homeless, and secondly for the complete lack of leadership responsibility on the issue.
As the chairperson of our local board, it is not sufficient to abdicate responsibility in some letter writing. City Vision, a coalition of Labour and Greens that put him in the position and whose members dominate the board, possess a powerful democratic agency to be part of the solution of homelessness in our city. City Vision local board members block-vote on matters; they did after all on his chairpersonship.
Therefore, they can make powerful statements and commanding directives on this critical issue.
In a 2019 Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health study, ‘Being at the Bottom Rung of the Ladder in an Unequal Society:
A Qualitative Analysis of Stories of People without a Home’, it was found that for participants with a history of homelessness, insufficient income was the primary cause of their homelessness. They reported that insufficient income was a catalyst to other factors, including family or domestic instability, lack of employment, lack of suitable housing, addictions to alcohol or drugs, lack of support from friends and or family, physical ill-health, mental health condition, and a prison or jail record.
These findings are consistent with several studies which reported that being poor and homeless are predictive of adopting maladaptive behaviour such as engaging in criminal activities, trading sex for money, and selling or using drugs.
Rather than associate homelessness with the real issues, Northey obfuscates, judges and blames. At present, inequality worsens, homelessness is now an accepted part of our street landscape, and the local board, council, government agencies and well-meaning agencies again fail to see the wood for the trees. They all fail to face the real issues.
We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Overseas, councils take the primary role in coordinating wrap-around services to support Northey’s ‘lasting solutions’ of urban homelessness. It is about priorities in essential governance, not blame and deflection. The local board, resourced through City Vision to get elected and therefore linked to political parties now in power, claims no agency themselves in addressing the shame of the very human suffering on our streets. That is not acceptable.
Russell Hoban, Ponsonby
Published 6 August 2021