Auckland's high cost of living means there is little dignity for beneficiaries and low income residents

Wednesday, 26 July 2017

Nell Smith-Hughes is a sickness beneficiary making ends meet in Auckland.

Auckland's spiralling housing and transport costs is putting beneficiaries and low-income residents at risk, advocates say.

Auckland Action Against Poverty co-ordinator Vanessa Cole said the benefit did not allow a dignified life in Auckland.

Auckland Action Against Poverty is an advocacy group which works to help beneficiaries and those struggling in Auckland.

Often a beneficiary family was forced to choose between putting food on the table or paying things like emergency doctors' visits.

Many were not able to eat healthily or gain employment because of transport issues. Many suffered ill health through winter in damp houses with no heating.

Social Development Minister Anne Tolley recently said there had been more than $1 billion reduction in the welfare bill in the last year.

The claims come in the week that Greens MP Metiria Turei has confirmed she will meet with Work and Income investigators to discuss her admissions of benefit fraud when on a sole parent benefit - Turei argued she and many other solo mums feel forced to commit fraud to make ends meet because the benefit payments are too low.

**READ MORE:

Beneficiaries say the culture at WINZ is humiliating and needs to change.

* The state of welfare: beneficiaries coming off quicker, costing more

* 2016: Future welfare bill 'cut by $7.5b'

AUT student Belinda Clarke, 21, says students suffer severe hardship in Auckland and need better help than Studylink provides.

* Welfare system may be to blame for Kiwis not taking jobs

* Mayors rally PM to create social welfare shake-up**

Cole said a massive amount of state housing was needed in Auckland both for beneficiaries and for those on low incomes as the private rental market was out of reach.

She said buying healthy food was too difficult in Auckland. 'People don't have enough income to even afford food and when they go to Work and Income to get a food grant they get scrutinised and intimidated.'

Sickness beneficiary Nell Smith-Hughes, 62, said if she didn't have subsidised housing, it would be impossible to live on her allowance of about $250 a week. 'If I didn't have this place here where I am now, I'd be up a creek without a paddle. I'd probably be sleeping in a car.'

The former healthcare assistant stopped working last year after the sudden death of her son coupled with a shoulder injury. She had lost her daughter to cancer a few years previously and the stress of everything compounded. 'It just became too much and it was affecting my decision making on the floor, we are dealing with people's lives in nursing and I just had to put my hand up to it.'

She lives in a west Auckland Salvation Army retirement unit at a cost of $52 a week and is able to spend around $50 a week on food.

She also had debts to WINZ for car repairs and furniture.

Though Smith-Hughes is an advocate for others dealing with WINZ, she said she found it hard to get anything done for herself. WINZ was dragging its feet on her application to change from jobseeker support with a medical exemption to a supported living payment and Smith-Huges said this delay and lack of communication was causing her hardship.

She had applied more than a month ago for the change as it would give her about $50 more each week. 'That would be a huge help. The New Zealand now is not the New Zealand I grew up in. People sleeping in cars used to just be on holiday.'

Cole said housing and welfare needed to be seen as a right and beneficiaries needed to be given the tools they needed to find secure work. 'People are being moved from the benefit and are being forced into work with insecure hours and low pay. Work doesn't get you out of poverty, work continues the poverty trap which people are forced into.'

Budgeting expert JL Holyoake said life for Auckland's beneficiaries was very difficult on the amount of money that they received.

'The more children they have, the more difficult it is. A lot of the time there's not a hell of a lot they can do.'

Another beneficiary who didn't want to be named said she received a total of $570 a week and out of that paid rent of $320 for a small two-bedroom unit for her and her teenage daughter.

She had recently moved off single parent support onto the student allowance as a way to better her life but this had meant almost $30 less each week. 'There's been times in my life that I have felt so overwhelmed and I haven't known what we are going to do…We survive because we are really fortunate with family help.'

The family-of-two were not able to afford fresh fruit or vegetables and could only buy meat sometimes. Clothes were all hand-me-downs and food grants were helpful if available.

She said the way WINZ had dealt with her had been soul-destroying. 'The very first thing WINZ could do is to just step back and remember that on a turn of a dime, they could all be me.'

The high costs in Auckland was not only affecting beneficiaries and those on low incomes but many students were living in hardship too.

Cole said students were often seen as a separate category to beneficiaries but they were placed in similar levels of hardship.

Masters student Belinda Clarke said the plight of students was often as hard or harder than beneficiaries from what she had seen.

The full-time student was on loaned living costs of $176 a week which only just covered her rent. She had to work 15 hours a week just to make ends meet and often ended up in debt.

Her parents earned over the threshold so she didn't qualify for a benefit or allowance but during the summer months could access a student hardship benefit that entitled her to more money than her living costs loan.

Many students she knew were sleeping at university and living off noodles to try and pay the bills. 'Everyone wants to come to AUT and Auckland University because they are good universities but nobody can afford to live here.'

Clarke said at the least, Studylink needed an office like WINZ with case managers so people could actually speak to someone and get help.