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The more the merrier? (Image: Archi Banal/Getty Images)
The more the merrier? (Image: Archi Banal/Getty Images)

OPINIONSocietyJanuary 23, 2023

I grew up in a crowded home and I’m grateful for it

The more the merrier? (Image: Archi Banal/Getty Images)
The more the merrier? (Image: Archi Banal/Getty Images)

New statistics reveal that nearly 40% of Pasifika people live in a home that’s short on bedrooms. Sela Jane Hopgood takes us into her overcrowded family home and asks whether it’s large extended families that are the problem.

It’s no secret in Aotearoa that the majority of Pasifika people come from large families. Valerie Adams, Faumuina To’aletai Mafaufau David Tua and the late Willie Los’e are prime examples.

However, responses to a One News article about last week’s Stats NZ report that Aotearoa’s housing is often unsuited to Pasifika families highlighted how many people don’t actually understand what Pasifika people mean when they say they come from a “large family”. 

Or why a Pasifika person doesn’t seem shocked when their Sāmoan friend says he has nine siblings. Or why you rarely see elderly Pasifika people in rest homes.

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Madeleine Chapman
— Editor

I come from a family of nine including my mum and dad. I have four brothers and two sisters and this year marks 40 years of living in our family home in South Auckland, which my parents bought on a single income back in 1983.

It’s a standalone three-bedroom home and over the 40 years, it has housed not only my immediate family, but grandparents, aunties and uncles, cousins and grandchildren.

An aerial view of Māngere
An aerial view of Māngere (Photo: Getty Images)

As a family we reaped the benefits of the Tongan language transmission, as we heard it spoken around the household constantly.

Monday was always our washing day, and it was like a 9am-5pm shift because it would take my mum the whole day to get through six to eight loads of laundry. There was always a queue to the bathroom at the beginning and end of the day. We never had to worry about the expiry date on milk and bread because we would get through those items within days, if not hours.

As our family expanded, my parents played Tetris trying to fit us all in comfortably while sticking to the Tongan tradition that a sister was not allowed to share a bedroom with her brother. I shared a bedroom with my younger sister for around 20 years and that’s what laid the foundation for us remaining best friends to this day. However, as a student, I did have to study right up until midnight at the university library as I knew I wouldn’t get the same peace and quiet back home. My parents’ bedroom was the lounge and although sometimes it was embarrassing to have a bed in the lounge, we did enjoy lounging on it as we watched Dragon Ball Z after school.

In the late 1990s, Mum and Dad saved up to have a garage built in our backyard, which included two extra bedrooms. That became a common sight on our street – garages turned into sleepout spaces or portable sleepout/self-contained cabins added onto the front lawn.

It was affordable back then and a lot of the houses bought 40-plus years ago had a generous front and backyard to allow for these plans to unfold. 

That’s not the case today.

Now I’m 31 and own a three-bedroom townhouse with no backyard in central Auckland with my husband, our four-year-old son and my brother-in-law. The home suits us now, but not if we plan to have more children as we can’t do what my parents did in the ‘90s and add a sleepout.

Choosing to have my brother-in-law live with us reflects the way I was brought up with my family – not wanting to let our family live alone, but also the importance of always having our family together. I will never tire of the strong bond my son has with his uncle or, as he calls him, his best friend.

I visited my family home recently and there were some streets I barely recognised because of the new construction in place – construction that looked like the very townhouse my husband and I bought. I immediately saw how a “small” Pasifika household would struggle to live in such cramped spaces.

Big families, smaller and smaller houses

I wonder who are the brains behind these houses in South Auckland, with its high density of Pasifika families? Who thought it was a good idea to have rows of 2-3 bedroom townhouses as a solution for this community? Pasifika people are more likely than the total population these days to rely on the rental market for their housing, yet a 4-bedroom rental in Favona costs on average $850 per week.

Kāinga Ora is building 10,000 new houses in Māngere over the next 10-15 years. (Photo: Justin Latif)

Stats NZ’s wellbeing and housing statistics manager Sarah Drake said it herself: “Our growing Pacific population is often unsupported by our current housing, particularly in large urban areas like Auckland where Pacific peoples are most likely to be located – and where even unsuitable housing can be unaffordable to rent or own.”

In the 2018 Census almost 400,000 people living in New Zealand identified with at least one Pacific ethnicity; two-thirds were born in Aotearoa and around 60% were under 30 years old.

Again, it’s no secret that Pasifika households include parents, children, grandparents or in-laws and sometimes aunts and uncles too. That has been the make-up of our families since we began migrating from the Pacific region. We pride ourselves on sticking together, making sure our family members are well taken care of and not alone in a western society.

The 2018 General Social Survey data showed that living with more people was associated with lower rates of loneliness for Pacific peoples. For all Pacific peoples, the average family wellbeing score in 2021 was 8.1 out of 10, compared with 7.7 out of 10 for the total population. This enhanced wellbeing is especially significant when you consider that Pasifika families tend to have less socio-economic privilege. Our strong family bonds serve us well. 

Although the facts laid out by Stats NZ are interesting, tell any Pasifika person that they’re living in a home that’s “not big enough” for their family and they would respond that they’re blessed to have a roof over their head.

If they wished for change it might be for a larger house; but reduce the size of their strong supportive family network? No way. 

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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(Image: Getty / Archi Banal)
(Image: Getty / Archi Banal)

Pop CultureJanuary 23, 2023

Another New Year, another group of festival-goers saved by NZ’s frontline drug heroes

(Image: Getty / Archi Banal)
(Image: Getty / Archi Banal)

While we wait for sensible drug law reform, we can thank our lucky stars for the NZ Drug Foundation and the lifesaving – or at the very least, bad-trip-preventing – work they do testing drugs at music festivals. 

Aotearoa’s summers are typically marked by an influx of sketchy party drugs and avoidable harm. This year has been no different. During the last three days of 2022, at the Rhythm & Vines festival in Gisborne, the New Zealand Drug Foundation found 25B-NBOH – a potent psychedelic and stimulant – in samples presented as LSD. 

Like many modern designer drugs, or novel synthetic substances, not much is known about the potential toxicity of 25B-NBOH. But Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm said similar substances like 25i-NBOMe had caused hospitalisations, psychosis and death in New Zealand and worldwide. 

“25B-NBOH can be active even at very tiny doses, so it’s difficult to dose accurately and may increase your risk of overdose,” she said.

Helm is warning it may still be in the community.

25B-NBOH? It sounds a little Blade Runner

25B-NBOH is in a class of drugs intended to mimic the effects of more traditional psychedelic substances. They’re the sort of things people often call “bath salts” – though that label more correctly applies to compounds that are either too obscure to legislate, or intentionally designed to avoid existing laws. Unlike more common drugs like meth, for example, they don’t generally have their own widely-recognised street names. 

Because New Zealand is such a small market, the drug scene changes quickly, and supply issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have reduced the availability of more mainstream substances like MDMA, cocaine or LSD.

The 25B-NBOH found at Rhythm & Vines was sold on paper tabs and misrepresented as LSD. Some of the tabs, quite poetically, were pink and featured an image of Pickle Rick from the animated sitcom Rick and Morty. As well as being ethically wrong, misrepresenting drugs can lead to dosing mistakes and harmful interactions with other substances when the person taking them is unable to safely assess the risks of a particular combination. 

What else did they find?

The usual synthetic cathinones – dimethylpentylone, eutylone and a variety of other mysterious-sounding compounds – as well as your more typical festival fare. 

Rhythm & Vines
Rhythm & Vines has been held in a Gisborne vineyard for the past 20 years. (Photo: Getty Images)

How do we know all this? 

The New Zealand Drug Foundation, as well as other organisations at events around the country, operated a testing booth at Rhythm & Vines which was open to any festival-goer to get their drugs tested openly and free of charge. 

Because of these programs we have a pretty good idea of conditions on the ground. For example, 78% of substances tested turned out to be as expected. Another 12% were a different drug entirely, and 10% had a little something extra mixed in. Most commonly, cathinones were being sold as, or with, MDMA, but benzodiazepines, amphetamines and cocaine had been adulterated too. 

This data is interesting, and cited internationally, but it also helps harm reduction services at home prepare for impending health implications. The detection of fentanyl, an opioid which has killed more than 100,000 people in the USA, bolstered the foundation’s calls for increased supplies of Narcan (used to counter opioid overdoses) in Aotearoa. 

Drug checking hasn’t always been legal. Legendary pioneers KnowYourStuffNZ were founded as a volunteer organisation in 2015 by Wendy Allison – or Wendy Allison ONZM as she is following the latest New Year Honours – after a wave of novel psychedelics and adulterated substances hit Aotearoa with an accompanying increase in medical events. At that time, drug checking operated in a grey area, and providers took a very real risk they would be prosecuted for their work. 

Then in 2020, Aotearoa became the first country to have explicitly legal drug checking. 

These programs have prevented untold harm including death and serious injury by identifying dangerous substances and helping users make informed decisions about the drugs they choose to take – or to throw away, as more than 60% of clients did in 2021/2022 upon learning their bag was full of mystery powder. 

That all sounds great. What’s the catch?

It sounds great because it is. If there’s a downside, it’s that outdated drug laws make these services so essential.

Prohibition creates an incentive for the illegal market to produce new and more potent drugs, with novel associated harms, and funnel huge sums into the hands of unscrupulous parties.  

Drug checking organisations do a priceless job, but part of the reason their work is so vital is because of the market conditions which make comparatively dangerous and unknown drugs so viable to sell. Regulation reduces that motive and therefore the risk to users. Sensible reform is just a legislative amendment away. 

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

Recent shifts towards treating drug use as a health, and not criminal, issue have undoubtedly been a move in the right direction. Legalised drug checking has enabled harm reduction organisations to protect and inform users. But as history shows, prohibition doesn’t prevent much at all. 

In the meantime, while we wait for common sense drug law, organisations like the New Zealand Drug Foundation, KnowYourStuffNZ and the New Zealand Needle Exchange will be testing at a festival or clinic near you.  

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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