UnsponsoredJuly 22, 2016

A brown girl’s dilemma

Founder

Aaradhna Patel comes into the room near visibly shaking. She hates interviews, does them because she must, and afterwards feels like she’s said all the wrong things. Given her occupation, it’s an unfortunate situation.

This one promises to be particularly trying. She’s talking about racism. About her personal experience of it, in fine detail. Haltingly at first, then flooding out of her.

Her mother is Samoan, her father Indian, but Aaradhna herself has never known any home apart from New Zealand. That didn’t stop her getting a uniquely toxic combination of prejudice from Samoans, Indians and – of course – Pākeha. She described what she had been through: both as a teenager and an adult; in her personal life and her professional.

Listening, I wondered how she carried on. It seemed like near every moment which might have felt close to the kind of unalloyed career triumph all creative people desire was spoiled by some ugliness.

Aaradhna is a soul singer, with a gripping, deeply affecting voice. A couple of times as we spoke, she sang softly – a relevant bar or two. Her voice was as clear and effortless as when she first emerged, a decade ago on I Love You. She seems slightly disdainful of her debut now, and parts of its production haven’t aged all that well. But songs like ‘Faith’, ‘Downtime’ and ‘I Love You Too’ revealed her as a natural R&B singer and writer, and two singles went top five.

Then she had six years in a kind of wilderness, releasing an odd Motown covers record and suffering a crisis of confidence which led to her all but disappearing as an artist and public figure. It was that era which she documented so winningly on Treble & Reverb, her triumphant comeback in 2012. Mostly produced by P-Money, it drew on a contained pallette of ‘60s soul and rocksteady which allowed her quietly devastating lyrics and husky delivery to shine. She rightly won a clutch of VMAs the following year – but, as she reveals here, even that moment was marred for her.

It’s that experience which drove both ‘Brown Girl’, the advance single, and a short, very direct note she put out a couple of weeks back.

Screen Shot 2016-07-22 at 6.24.15 AM — An excerpt from a note Aaradhna published on Twitter

As she spoke about the writing of the song, tears rolled down her cheeks, as they did frequently during the hour we spoke. But once she was going, she seemed unable to stop.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. Listen to Aaradhna’s Brown Girl – released today – on Spotify here.

So I just wondered if you could maybe start by telling me a bit about what motivated you to write that note?

At school I got called insulting names to do with my race, ethnicity and that. And of course it hurt, you know, because those are my parents and if they’re mocking me they’re mocking my parents. I just grew up feeling, at moments, like I was being treated [that way] because of my skin colour, that’s what it felt like, or what I was.

And it’s funny because sometimes it would come from my own race too, I would be judged by Samoans, they’d be backstabbing me in Samoan and I can understand what they’re saying, they’re saying “this egg here, this Indian…” you know, or I’ll go to a dairy and it felt like I was getting the double-stare, like I was going to steal something.

I could give you heaps of stories, I don’t know if you want to hear them…

I feel like if those stories are in you and have affected you then I’d love to hear them if you’re alright to tell them.

Yeah well I’ll tell one story and then I’ll tell the story that made me feel like writing the song. Boarding a plane a while ago – 2008 or something – this was boarding from L.A coming back to New Zealand.

I was on a first class ticket. I was sitting down in my seat and this air hostess told me to get out, she said ‘you’re in the wrong place,’

She hadn’t even looked at my ticket yet! But I knew where I was supposed to be sitting. Then she looked at the ticket and she was like “oh…” and she sort of looked surprised that I was supposed to be sitting there.

How did that make you feel when you realised what that was?

I don’t know, I never feel good after those moments. The worst moment was the Vodafone Music Awards where I won a lot of awards.

2013?

Yeah, and my family and my girls were all there in the crowd. I won my first award, and one of the girls heard – when I went up to get my award – heard a guy a few rows down from her say yell “fuck off back to India”. None of my brothers and sisters heard it, I’m glad they didn’t. He was talking a lot of shit.

Then I won the second award and he goes “F off! Boo, Boo!” and stuff like that. That second time, my girl goes “oh you’d better be quiet, this is her brothers and sisters here and he goes, “I don’t give a damn, I don’t give a fuck”. And then I won the third award, and he got up and walked out. The whole time I didn’t know anything, and at the end of it she tells me about it.

So this was immediately after the show when you’re buzzing off the awards?

It was a good moment to win all the awards but that moment really ruined it for me you know? That one little thing is actually not little, it’s big and that’s the moment that made me feel like writing about it.

That was the moment that pushed me to write a song about it. So ‘Brown Girl’ is about wanting people to not label me, like something he said just took away everything, like what I said in the letter, just one little label can take everything away. It feels… just to have someone say “fuck off back to India”, I wasn’t even born in India! My Dad’s Indian, it’s half of me – but I was born in New Zealand, I’m a New Zealander.

Having that bi-racial background, it sounds like at times you’ve felt a sense of not really belonging to either side in a way.

Yeah it felt like I didn’t belong, it was hard to find where I could fit in. I think it wasn’t until I was older, not until I found my best mates that I could just be like “yeah, I feel like I belong”.

When I went to Porirua College – by then I had my good friends – but I remember seeing on a desk ‘Radz curry muncher’ you know.

I cried after that, I remember. I think I was 6th form. 16, and I read that. It’s dumb because that wasn’t the first time I’d been called that and it just hurts.

It hurts because I love my Mum and Dad so much, and if someone says “you’re a dumb coconut…” then I feel like they’re talking about them.

I’m glad my brothers didn’t hear that guy [at the awards] – and I’m glad my mate didn’t tell them. But I’m glad she told me, because otherwise I wouldn’t have written the song, that was a time where I thought “I need to write something” just to express how it feels and in the song I just wanted people to know not to judge me.

Have you experienced racism within the industry as well? Because I do feel like artists of colour are presented in a different way and given different presentation to white artists.

I remember being in a meeting in the States and they were trying to figure out what audience I should be targeting and they didn’t know where to put me. Because I wasn’t black and I wasn’t white, I was this Samoan-Indian person from New Zealand.

They were fighting about it, trying to figure out where I go but I was thinking the whole time “shouldn’t it just be about the music?”

Is this in meetings with [former label] Republic?

Yeah. It felt like they didn’t know where to put me and I was like “shouldn’t this be about music, not my race or skin colour?”

So this was in meetings, where these kinds of conversations were happening around you but not necessarily to you. Did you ask those kinds of questions? Do you feel like you’re empowered to?

At the time I think I didn’t really say anything.

How did it make you feel?

It felt like I was slowly getting back to that place where I was just losing the passion for doing it, like I didn’t want to do it. I was kind of getting put off inside but I just thought I’d see if it was all going to work. But it just wasn’t right for us and that’s when we left, that’s why we left Republic – because it didn’t feel like they wanted us to be what we were before we signed with them.

Like they thought they’d sign you and then they could “fix” you.

Yeah! It felt like it was just too much. Like, what do you want from me? I just want to sing some songs that I love singing, and now there’s all this other shit. I didn’t like it – we wanted to just be ourselves and get the music out, and not have to try and be something I’m not. They were trying to fix me to be something. It was funny, they didn’t know what to do with me because of what I was and they didn’t know if they [wanted me] to reach the urban market or the pop, white market. I was like “this is weird”.

The songs are the songs, right?

Yeah can’t I just sing a song and you just put it on the radio? I don’t know, I think that happens everywhere, that’s just the way it is. It feels like that’s how everything is.

So the record didn’t come out with Republic – or it did and they dumped it?

It did but I don’t think it was looked after, it wasn’t a priority thing.

It must be horrible to make something and just have so much excitement but then realise that they don’t really care about it – when it’s been years of your life. Because Treble & Reverb felt like it was coming from a very particular place – a profound, maybe even a clinical depression. Is that fair?

Yeah, I would say.

And then the effort of bringing yourself out, bringing the songs out of that – to just end with “oh well, that came out this week” must be heartbreaking.

They were trying to figure out what market and how I should come across, because I was in my phase of going op-shopping and loving wearing all these second hand dresses. They were like ‘you need to stop dressing like a grandma’ [laughs].

That’s what they said! I mean, I loved dressing that way at the time. I go through my phases and it kind of just put me off when they said stuff like that.

To me it feels like in the music industry, often when people are successful they tend to not be doing what everyone else is doing. They tend to not look particularly managed or styled. The industry kind of presents itself as wanting people who are different. But then someone comes along dressing in op-shop dresses, but singing these soul songsand they go ‘oh no, no, no, we’ve got to fix this’.

It was weird, they weren’t happy with me being me.

Does Treble & Reverb feel bittersweet in a way when you look back?

Yeah, it is bittersweet. But for me, I’m happy that it came out. The music that I put out [lets me] express myself and I got to express myself through that album and it helped me therapeutically, so it did enough for me.

Tell me about the backstory to Brown Girl, what’s happened in your life since?

I went through a breakup and I’m back together with him now. But the music is about love, the breakup, life. Iit’s just a timeline from 2013 until 2015.

Being with Leon [Henry, ex-Breakers small forward], a professional athlete, obviously you have to go where the money is and with music it’s very similar. Was that a source of vulnerability for the relationship?

Yeah, I mean spending time away didn’t help. Long distance took a toll on the relationship and there’s so many things that happened which affected it and I guess I wrote about it.

Like what kind of things?

On the album there’s a song about breaking up and taking all his stuff away and that was when I was in L.A at what was our apartment. He’d already gone back to New Zealand and was playing somewhere else. Some things happened, things that really made me angry. I don’t really want to go back there but I was in a really angry, sad place and ‘Empty Hall’ – I wrote that song after I packed all his stuff away.

Then there’s other songs about being broken up and trying to forget about everything, just forget the dramas and move on and have fun. There’s so many different topics in there. I mean, it’s different but it’s still relating to the same man. They all came from our situation.

So who did you work with?

I did it the same where I did it with P-Money. I wrote [all the songs] and did the production and stuff then gave them to Jeff from [her new US label] Truth and Soul and he turned it around, flipped it and it was a completely different thing. With Treble & Reverb Pete kind of did it the same, like the same way I sent them to him.

So he just sort of fleshed out your ideas?

Yeah but he made it better. It was still the same idea but with Jeff I gave him the music and he kept my melody and lyrics but switched the whole instrumental, the whole production side. I had this whole different outlook on the music.

This is sonically quite different, with synthetic textures and elements of ‘80s production. It doesn’t sound so much like a retro record at all.

Yeah that’s what I loved about it, there’s so many different kinds of genres in it.

Was there a fear involved, working in more of a live setting with the Truth and Soul people? Because sometimes I guess if you have a private process you can take your time.

Yeah it’s comforting!

Whereas if there’s loads of people you’ve kind of got to bring it right there and then.

Yeah I was really nervous about coming together with everyone, because they’ve all got this huge resumé. But it was fun, it was cool that everyone was just jamming.

When that anxiety or depression hits – I mean that’s fed into some of your songs but does that make things difficult for you in the music industry?

Of course! Especially when you’re about to put some new music out, I’m super sensitive and there’s people that can be so ruthless. Erykah Badu said it herself, ‘I’m an artist and I’m sensitive about my shit’.

I know what she’s talking about! You’re putting your heart in something and you’re giving it to people. You’re putting your heart in someone’s hands, that’s what it feels like, and you don’t know if they’re going to squash it or not.

How do you deal with that?

I have to just talk to myself sometimes, you know? I kind of just have to remind myself that I’ve achieved some things and that I should be proud of them. I also keep my people around me, they’re always supportive and that helps. I try to keep a positive circle around me and get rid of anybody who’s negative, I try not to read negative comments. I used to be so bad when I first started out, I’d read every single YouTube comment when I was younger…

Nowadays I don’t look at that stuff man. I try to do things that will keep me positive, I try not to search for trouble.

Has that always been the case? Like have there been times where you’ve felt like you’ve listened too much to other voices about a record or anything?

Probably with the first album I was more naive, or scared. I was writing my songs the way I wanted to but then I felt like I probably didn’t say enough and should’ve really stuck to my guns with certain things. Like with ‘Shake’. I wanted real horns, i didn’t want that kind of video, I didn’t want dance because I’m not a dancer, there were so many things I should have said no to. I should have said no when I wanted to say no, that’s how I was when I first started out. I’ve got to a stage now where I can tell you “no”, I’ll tell you nicely, but I’ll still say “no” to things that I want to say no at.

Tell me about another song which was important to the record.

‘Devils Living In The Shadow’, that song initially came from my nightmares. I’ve always had nightmares since I was young, but they got worse after my depression. Usually it’s about the same things, like the demons that were following me and that’s how the song started.

But actually it’s a song that kind of represents a whole bunch of things, like trying to do right and I wrote it for my mum sort of. Like “stop whispering” – because my mum, she has schizophrenia, she hears voices and in the verse I say [sings “speak up, please stop following me, I don’t want your whispering in my ear no more” – that’s me in just certain lines just being inspired by Mum. She hears voices all the time but she loves Jesus, she’s a Jesus lover! And she always tried to instill that in us.

Is that hard having a parent with schizophrenia?

It used to be but we’re good now. When I was younger [I had seen] my mum when she was normal, then it wasn’t until I was ten where I first saw things happening.

It must be so hard when you’re ten years old because your mother’s such an important figure to you and you’re still so vulnerable.

It was a sad day, when I found out that Mum wasn’t the same. I’m just glad that my Dad’s stuck around and he looks after my Mum, he’s a good man. And you know, that’s why when people say stuff about my parents and their ethnicities, that’s who they are and it hurts when someone else talks bad about them. Our ethnicity and stuff, that’s what my Mum and Dad are and that’s what I am, and if you’re trying to mock me you’re mocking my parents, and that hurts.

Keep going!

SocietyJuly 9, 2016

A crisis heads south: the new homeless of Hamilton

Aimie Cronin

Guest writer

There’s a block of houses in Hamilton that exists as some kind of sad metaphor. It sits in the middle of tidy suburban streets and it lines a small part of the new motorway, so that thousands of cars pass by it on their way to work and on their way home. It’s as close to a slum as you could get in this country, the kind of place that makes you think, Who would live there? Who could? You wouldn’t send someone there to rot, and yet the fact it remains says something of our apathy. Housing New Zealand owns the 58 units on the 21,000 square metre site. It’s called the Jebson Block.

I wrote about the neighbourhood and the people who lived there in 2014. About Josephine Anderson who had requested a house anywhere but the Jebson Block out of fear that her kids would grow up around gangs, but was placed there anyway; her son was in jail when I spoke to her, the holes punched in the walls from the worst days reminding her of the sadness. About Lana Radcliffe, who had a smile on her face that made no sense and a toy cat sitting in the window ledge; she said she was “very lonely, very lonely indeed” as she remained in her unit while those who surrounded her moved off. About Mike Surch, who collected junk and piled it up on top of junk, a jolly character who knew everyone in the neighbourhood and had the endearing nickname Old Man Mike.

And Sharon Karauna, who had to sit down halfway up the steps to the bathroom in order to catch her breath, even though she was only 48. Since those visits, I can’t drive past the Jebson Block without thinking of Sharon Karauna and the sad sound of her wheezing, the way she looked standing there in her dressing gown that day.

Boarded up social housing in the Jebson Block, Hamilton. Photo: Kaycie O'Connor — Boarded up social housing in the Jebson Block, Hamilton. Photo: Kaycie O’Connor

Early in 2014, Housing New Zealand had told tenants of the Jebson Block that the houses they occupied were going to be demolished and each of them relocated by the year’s end. It’s been over two years and no decisions have been made regarding the future of the place. The land is available for housing that is fit for purpose and all that is lacking is the governmental will to do it.

For years the level of graffiti has been so bad it looks like people must tag there as a permanent job. Since 2015, HNZ has paid a security firm over $2500 a month to keep an eye on the area after concerns were raised about the level of graffiti and rubbish. In May, a letter was sent out to the few remaining residents to say three buildings in the area would be demolished: “The buildings are old and no longer fit for purpose,” it said, “and it would be uneconomic to repurpose and reconfigure them to bring them into line with the current standards.” It said the houses would be removed and the plots of land turned to grass “until decisions are made on the possible future use of the land”.

OCONNOR_StateHousing017 — Graffiti on the walls of the Jebson Block, Hamilton. Photo: Kaycie O’Connor

The buildings are almost all empty, now. In between the boarded up windows, sometimes a light can be seen inside a few of the houses at night. It’s as if everything about the place is dead, but it still limps on. I knocked on Old Man Mike’s door last week, but I knew it was empty before I got there because the clutter was gone from his carport. The toy cat still looks out from Lana Radcliffe’s window but the curtains are closed and no one answers the door. Down one side street, toddlers were running out onto the deserted road. Their aunty was watching from the fence and she looked around her and said “it’s all contaminated.” It felt like that.

One of the few remaining tenants says that at night he often sees cars parked down the abandoned driveways, people sleeping inside them. Some Hamilton-based agencies say there has been an increase in rough sleepers who have come down from Auckland. Some say they are coming from all over, some say they have been here all along. One week last month, five cases of people sleeping in their cars had come to the attention of Hamilton’s St Vincent de Paul general manager Mike Rolton. “They come to see us for blankets, warm clothes, food,” he said. One was a 21 year old woman, found with her nine month old baby after she had parked on a suburban street and a homeowner followed the sound of a crying child. I wanted desperately to talk to her, but when Rolton asked she said she felt too ashamed.

In the Waikato, there are around 190 people on the social housing register, and there are many more who don’t put their names in the mix, but are in serious need of housing. In 2014, the People’s Project was set up in Hamilton as a response to the growing concern that the city was rife with people who had dire housing needs. Because even the squalor of Jebson is preferable to the makeshift conditions that some are forced to live in instead

“The Jebson Block is an important part of the supply chain,” says chief executive Julie Nelson, “and the fact that it is sitting there empty is not helpful in the current market. Imagine how many people we could transition overnight if that housing were available.” Nelson says the vast majority of clients helped by the People’s Project (211 have been housed since it started in 2014 with a 93 per cent retention rate) are housed in the private sector.

People's Project chief executive Julie Nelson. Photo: Kaycie O'Connor — People’s Project chief executive Julie Nelson: “Imagine how many people we could transition overnight if that housing were available.” Photo: Kaycie O’Connor

Why are they not placed in social housing? “What people are saying is that their housing need is now,” she says. Even then, private housing is difficult to come by. One general manager of a private rental company who asked not to be named in order to speak freely, said “the unfortunate thing is that the greater the need that the tenant has, the less likely they are to get private accommodation. Unless you’ve got a real social conscience, if you had to choose between eight people living in a car and a family with jobs going for the same house, you are more likely to put the people with a job into it. That’s the harsh reality.”

When I met Carina Renata, she was sitting in an office at Whanau Ora centre Te Kohao Health. We could see the Jebson Block from the window on the top floor. Imagine if houses had been built so that you could move in there, I say. But she’s done with imagining. She looks out the window and she doesn’t say anything at all.

Carina Renata is a small woman who is 43 years old. She has five kids. She dresses tidily in a cheap black suit and she speaks only after having thought hard about it first. The need for her to find a place to live affects her so much that the pain looks physical. Her support person says she is a strong, proud woman, and indeed, the tears only fall down her face once the whole time I talk to her. Renata and her five kids have been on the Housing New Zealand waitlist for six months. Four months ago she was notified that she was being fast tracked, but she’s still waiting.

When the private rental she had been living in was sold, she found it difficult to secure a place she could afford that was big enough for her family (she gets $600 a week on the benefit). She has a bad credit rating thanks to $300 owing on an ancient power bill and that was another deterrent. So she applied for social housing. She has been to Work and Income at her most desperate, with nowhere for her and her kids to sleep that night. “They offered me a motel to stay in for three nights and that was OK, I took that, but the situation was still there when the three days were over.”

Renata is studying hospitality management and four of her children are at school in the Waikato, where they have lived for the last five years. As she waits for a house to become available, there have been nights where she has slept in her 2002 Honda van with the three youngest children, aged 10, 12 and 14. “We slept on a mattress in the back,” she says. She is not the complaining type. It wasn’t cold, they had food, access to the Laundromat, just nowhere to live. Right now, her three eldest children are staying with friends. “We have never been apart, it’s so stressful,” she says. A relative has agreed to house her and the two youngest, but only temporarily. “Where to next?” she asks, and the tears fall from her eyes.

Tureita and Saphire at the Te Kohau Health Centre Photo: Kaycie O'Connor — Te Kohau Health Centre’s Tureita Moxon and Saphire Tairakena. “It seems that society is saying it’s okay,” says Moxon. “And we need to be saying very loudly that it isn’t.” Photo: Kaycie O’Connor

The second time she visited WINZ about emergency housing, Renata was given a list of Hamilton motels to call. The rugby was in town that weekend. She would have to pay back over $1000 if she stayed in any accommodation for those three nights. Saphire Tairakena, a Whanau Ora navigator for Te Kohao Health had come on board as an advocate and she sat with Renata that day in the WINZ office.

“It was the first time I had been to an appointment where a WINZ worker offered an $80 petrol voucher,” Tairakena says. “They were saying, Go back to your family [in Paeroa], even though Carina had told them that place was already overcrowded. They said that was the last option they could give her because she was not willing to incur another $1000 in debt.” For three nights the family slept on mattresses on the floor at Kirikiriroa Marae, and managing director of Te Kohao Health Tureiti Moxon says that hundreds have taken shelter in that same spot over the past three years.

“What needs to be remembered,” says Moxon, “is that sleeping in a car, at the Marae, at a relatives, all these experiences have an impact on those little ones. It seems that society is saying it’s okay, and we need to be saying very loudly that it isn’t.”

Mike Rolton says he sees a case like this one every day. He’s seen it all. He says there has been an increase in poverty this year, but since he started at St Vinnies six years ago, things have been getting progressively worse.

It’s hard, he says, to quantify the number of people sleeping rough, in sheds, in overcrowded houses. The Ministry of Social Development would not break down numbers from region to region, but said 80 applicants on the social housing register have indicated they are living in cars. To give an idea of the growing need within this city, he quotes some figures. In 2012, St Vinnies Hamilton made around 230 lunches every week for schools that had identified hungry children. They now make 1800 a week. In 2012, they drove around poor neighbourhoods in a van and fed around 50 people each weeknight, now they feed over 100. In 2012, they furnished 75 homes and this year, they furnished 320.

Mike Rolton, general manager of St Vincent de Paul, Hamilton. Photo: Kaycie O'Connor — Mike Rolton, general manager of St Vincent de Paul, Hamilton: “They come to see us for blankets, warm clothes, food.” Photo: Kaycie O’Connor

David Martini approached St Vinnies and the charity sent him away with food and the promise it will gather items to furnish the family’s new rental. He and his partner and their seven kids, the youngest, 4, the oldest, 15, have just moved into a five bedroom place. They own one double bed, one mattress, one couch, four sheets, five towels, one week’s worth of clothing each.

The family moved to Hamilton from Wellington three months ago, David hoping to find work as a builder, hoping to find a home to live first, and it took all this time. While they looked, they shifted into a shed at a relative’s house in Melville. In the shed, they had one double bed, one mattress and a couch. “All my little ones were on the bed,” says David, “the older kids were on the mattress, and me and my partner were on the couch.”

Inside, his relatives had another family staying and the house was overcrowded. When it got too cold and too hard, David and his family moved into motels for a week here and there, racking up the debt with WINZ which he estimates to be around $15,000.

“Things were really spiralling down,” he says. The kids got sick and scabs appeared all over their bodies, they cried a lot and David started smoking drugs again. He started noticing people stare at him and his family and he wondered if it was because they are brown, or because the kids have sores all over their arms and legs. He enrolled them at the free medical centre and the scabs are being treated but will not relent.

“I felt like being violent towards people sometimes,” he says. “I was in the state of mind where people would look at me and I would think ‘What are you looking at, we are just like you. Don’t look at my kids like they are scum, they are just like you.’”

Twice a week St Vinnies runs a lunch for people who need it, and it’s usually full. About 10 hands go up when the question is asked: how many of you know someone living in a car. A man yells out: “Is it true that they are paying people $5000 to move down here? Can I move to Auckland and then move back down?” The room erupts into sad laughter.

It’s not exactly true.

In May, the Ministry of Social Development announced plans to lure people out of the big smoke with $5000 to cover relocation costs. Says MSD’s housing general manager Jeremy Wilson, “We must believe the move will be sustainable … no one will be queue jumped, no local person will be displaced. We don’t support financing someone to move unless they have got a house signed up and they have access to the services they need.” The Ministry has forecasted 100-150 families will access the grant in the coming year, and after that says Wilson, “we are looking to move as many people who are willing to move.”

Hamilton Christian Night Shelter manager Peter Humphries. Photo: Kaycie O'Connor — Hamilton Christian Night Shelter manager Peter Humphries. “I have to tell families that we don’t have a service for them.” Photo: Kaycie O’Connor

They always move back, says Peter Humphries, manager of Hamilton Christian Night Shelter. “They go back to the environment they are used to,” he says, “and it might compound the problem then, because they may have lost the garage or wherever they were staying. Someone else may have moved in there while they were gone.” He says the issue of homelessness in Hamilton is “steady as she goes,” but he gets a lot of calls from families, “and I have to tell them that we don’t have a service for them. There is a lack of family accommodation [in Hamilton].”

He says it’s hard to pin down the numbers of rough sleepers, of people sleeping in cars, “If, say, you are in overcrowded accommodation and someone comes around on Census night, you are not going to say you live there.”

I call Women’s Refuge to ask if they have had an increase in demand. “What we have noticed,” says manager Ariana Simpson, “is the number of cases we are having pushed down from Auckland towards us. There is definitely an increase in the number of people who are ringing our service and are living in their cars. We are a refuge from domestic violence, but these women have children. We have looked at the situation and said, ‘Oh my god, we are not going to turn our backs on women living in their cars with kids.’”

Theresa and Billy-Ray Moana have recently found housing thanks to the People’s Project, but before that they were living in their Mazda Demio. Most nights they would park outside the rugby clubrooms on the outskirts of the city. They would shower at the public pools. Billy-Ray would push the seat as far back as it would go in the car, and rest his feet on top of the brake. His wife Theresa would curl up on the passenger seat. “It was cramped,” she says, “it was cold, it was freezing at times.” She was scared at night when people walked past the window.

On the day I met them, they had walked across town to St Vinnies to get food, because their money had run out. They said they have $100 left between them at the end of the week after paying $250 rent for a studio apartment, including power. They don’t seem to mind this state of being at zero dollars most weeks after rent has gone out and the bills paid, after one measly grocery shop. All that matters is they have somewhere to live.

Read more of The Spinoff’s coverage of the homelessness crisis in Madeleine Chapman’s ‘A Week at Te Puea’