Census showed 20,000 homeless

Press, 7 September 1989, Page 2

Census showed 20,000 homeless

PA Wellington Four thousand children and 16,000 adults were living in makeshift shelters, cars, sheds, and other types of temporary dwellings at the time of the last Census. The Statistics Department said in its just-pub-lished report on families and households based on Census figures that this amounted to 9075 private households. The 1986 Census found about 7000 people were living in motor camps in households with an average size of 1.8 people. Other types of temporary dwellings included makeshift shelters “not designed for living purposes” such as garages, sheds and cars. Others were structures originally intended as short-stay or holiday accommodation, such as tents, caravans, campervans, boats, and motor camp units. The report said 20,000 people were living in temporary dwellings by 1986. The New Zealand Housing Network claimed yesterday that the figure under-estimated the number of homeless people. The network is an association of social service organisations concerned with housing.

Its spokesman, the Rev. Charles Waldegrave, said he thought a report by the Housing Commission last year which suggested the number of homeless people to be about 70,000 was more accurate. “There are many people living in temporary dwellings which the census-takers never get to,” he said. The Housing Corporation had begun to make some inroads into solving the housing problem, but it still had a long way to go before there was enough shelter for those who needed it, he said. New Zealand should recognise shelter was a human right by writing this into the statute books, as other countries had done, said Mr Waldegrave. It was uncivilised not to do so, he said. A "■V