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Auckland cafe for homeless struggling to survive, may close without $60k help Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Nick Truebridge for RNZ A community cafe on Auckland's Karangahape Rd may be forced to close if it cannot raise $60,000 by the end of the month.   For more than a decade, Merge Cafe has been a space where the city's homeless can grab a tea or coffee, a hot meal and have a chat with a peer support worker. For months it has been running at a loss, due largely to the cancellation of key fundraising events on the back of Auckland's repeated Covid-19 lockdowns. One regular at Me...

While people "would think" emergency housing is safer than the streets, a number of homeless youth have claimed the motels pose a greater threat to their welfare than rough-sleeping, Hendry says. "Some of the experiences we're hearing from young people is that they were actually safer living on the streets. Their experience of being in emergency accommodation is more traumatising and more dangerous," he said. "Often these environments are unsafe, often they don't have support around them. Imagine a 16 or 17-year-old you love and care about - would you put them in a motel by themself with a bu...

Social housing in Ōtāhuhu. Photo: RNZ Insight/Eva Corlett The number of grants being given out by the Ministry of Social Development has increased substantially over the past couple of years. Just under 4000 Emergency Housing Special Needs Grants were given out in September 2018. Fast forward two years later, and that number is now just short of 10,000. Between March and September last year alone, the number of grants shot up by 3000, as the Covid-19 pandemic led to a rush to provide everyone with a roof over their heads. Jo Denvir, the chief executive of Lifewise, an Auckland-based social...

Emergency housing special needs grants have more than doubled in two years.