[asia-apec 1263] APEC and Auckland's homeless

[APEC Monitoring Group]

NZ Herald, Auckland, NZ, August 25, 1999
By Peter Calder

Homeless feel pressure of Apec cleanup

[Photo: APEC HASSLES: Street-dweller "Gee" says she has been picked up by police eight times in the past fortnight.]

The street-front window dressing in the Methodist Mission's inner-city ministry in Auckland, just across Queen Street from Aotea Square, makes it clear that the organisation is no friend of Apec.

"Apec-it's not worth it," one display proclaims.

Another overlays a deep blue globe with the legend, "We are concerned for a global underclass. Is Apec?"

But lately the mission's clients have been getting the distinct impression that Apec is no friend of theirs either.

The police deny it, but mission staff and clients insist that the long arm of the law has been flexing more muscle.

The homeless say they are being hassled more often, and that police are taking action over matters they once ignored.

Some say police patrols have told them directly that - just as the intersections are being resealed, the gardens replanted, the kerbside bins replaced - they are going to be cleaned up.

The mission's Airedale St building is the hub of daily life for many of those to whom the streets are home.

Each day at least a few dozen of them sit down to a free bowl of soup at lunchtime and a more substantial meal in the late afternoon for $1.

"They pay a dollar, they owe nothing, says George Hill, the smiling giant who manages the mission's foodbank and meals.

"One dollar allows them to keep their dignity and it helps those who need to realise that everything's not for free."

A couple of dozen showed up for lunch yesterday - though numbers can get as high as 80.

Mr Hill made me welcome.

With him sitting nearby, some of his clients trusted me as much as they are likely to trust anyone with a notebook.

Stories get better when notebooks are flipped open, of course, and some of the people I talked to were a bit vague on the details.

But they are used to attention from passing police patrols and they are used to keeping a low profile to avoid it.

And they are unanimous that the frequency, the vigour, the detail of police scrutiny are picking up as Apec approaches.

Natasha, aged 19, said a police officer had told her as she sat on a bench outside McDonalds that "we are going to clear you street kids off the streets because you make the place look bad."

Charlie, 20 years on the street, who gave his age as "old enough", reckoned "they are trying to make out we are a nuisance to the public when we just want to mind our own business."

And another, who declined to be named but whom Mr Hill described as "one of the real hard core", was in no doubt about why it was happening.

"They want every country in the world to say what a wonderful place New Zealand is. There is no poverty, no crime, no problems."

Superintendent Howard Broad, the manager of the Auckland police district, said the weekend's arrest tally was higher than normal and there might have been an operational reason for that.

But there had "certainly been no instruction" issued to or by police about cleaning up the streets, except for the requirement to maintain security in the Domain - where at least 20 of the city's homeless have shelters - immediately before and during the leaders' summit.

Someone needs to tell the street people.  Up the hill at the Auckland City Mission, the clients are also uneasy.

Missioner Diane Robertson said those with mental illnesses led simple, predictable lives that were about to be upended.

"There is a real sense of concern".