Homelessness worse in Wellington

The Herald reports:

The Wellington City Council has again announced it wants to end homelessness after already trying to do this by 2020 and failing.

It’s hard to imagine the council holds the secret to solving a problem that has become entrenched in our society but here we are, again.

On the face of it, the council’s latest housing action plan reads more like an ideological wish list than a meaningful blueprint.

This is about Councillors wanting to virtue signal.

Te Mahana was launched in 2014 with the goal of eliminating homelessness by 2020. It failed to achieve this ambitious goal with the problem actually getting worse over that time, not better.

This is no surprise.

The council has spent $3.3 million on homelessness through grants and contracts over the past decade.

But council documents show a review is under way into the “effectiveness of those financial contributions to understand the impact of the council’s investment in homelessness prevention and response”.

They spent $3.3 million and the problem is worse. Now they will spend more money on consultants to tell them the spending didn’t work, but no doubt the solution is to spend even more.