A family of 13 has been living in two one-bedroom motel units for more than a year after a fire at their Kāinga Ora home, highlighting New Zealand’s emergency housing crisis with 26,000 people on the waitlist and a nearly seven-fold increase in occupancy lengths.

Twelve months after their six-bedroom West Auckland home caught fire, the mum and 10 of her 12 children still remain at the same cramped emergency housing motel complex in Takapuna.

She told the Herald said has been given little support by authorities since being initially “dumped” with her 12 on the North Shore in October 2021.

National Party housing spokesman Chris Bishop said the family’s plight was yet another case highlighting Kāinga Ora’s inefficiencies and the country’s dire emergency housing predicament.

The family lives in tight sleeping arrangements in the motel. Photo / Michael Craig

Emergency accommodation - established in 2016 by the previous National government to address increasing homelessness - has steeply increased during the Covid-19 years as the Government moved people off the streets and into motels during lockdowns.

What was supposed to be a short-term solution has become a long-term nightmare for many families as the average stay in emergency housing has gone from three weeks in 2018 to more than 20 weeks by the end of September, according to information provided to Bishop.

The public wait list at the end of September was also more than 26,500, which has increased by nearly 21,000 during the past five years. More than $1 billion has also been spent since Labour took office in 2017 to pay the moteliers being used.

Emergency housing in 2021 alone cost taxpayers more than $365 million.

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For the family of 13 in Takapuna their frustration grows with authorities, who the mum believes “basically forgot about us”.

“We thought this would be for a couple of months until our house was repaired,” the 43-year-old single mum, who did not wish to be named, told the Herald.

The family, which has children who are aged 5 to 22, lost much of their belongings in the fire and have begged and borrowed clothes and furniture from whānau and good samaritans.

“We are grateful for the support we get, but I want a house where the kids have play areas and I can get them back into a routine.

The fire at the house was an accident, she said, adding the family had lived in their previous Ranui accommodation for two years and had been Kāinga Ora tenants for two decades.

“There’s nowhere for the kids to play, apart from small lawn on the motel driveway, and now the older kids are going off the rails because they have no structure. They are not going to school,” the mum said of living in the motel units.

One of her teenage children is also now coming to the attention of police, she said, while the Ministry of Education is also looking into the whānau and children’s concerning drop in school attendance.

Family relocated to a Takapuna motel after a fire at their Ranui home in October 2021. Photo / Michael Craig

The mum told the Herald when she moved into a motel, “I hated it but I had to be strong for the children because I didn’t know how long we would be here”.

“There are days when I feel like giving up, but I have to keep going for my children, as I am their mother and father,” she said. “I had the kids in a routine in Ranui and they went to school.”

The woman said she wants Kāinga Ora to return the family to their house in Ranui, once it has been repaired.

She said she had been estranged from her partner - the father of 11 of the children - for two years.

The children are split between the two side-by-side motel units, she explained, with the older children in one and the younger kids with their mum in the other.

Family relocated to Takapuna Motor Lodge after fire at their Ranui Kainga Ora home. Photo / Michael Craig

The mum said she always makes sure the younger children are fed, but managing the food budget is a challenge.

“When we run out of food, we go to the food bank for support,” she said.

“There’s always bickering and arguing and now my children won’t go to school. They have been enrolled but won’t go. They want to go back to their old school in Ranui.

She said the high cost of living, especially in an affluent North Shore suburb, and the cost of petrol made driving her children to their school prohibitive.

“I’m fighting with the kids every morning just to get them up to go to school. I’m struggling.”

The Ranui home the whānau of 13 were living in that caught fire. Photo / Supplied

The Ministry of Social Development, which manages emergency and transitional housing, said because of privacy matters, they could not comment on the family’s case.

Kāinga Ora’s regional director for Auckland North and West, Taina Jones, said they sympathised with the whānau.

“After the fire, which we understand was accidental, [their] home was uninhabitable. Despite our efforts, another Kāinga Ora home large enough to accommodate the family in a suitable area was not available.”

Kāinga Ora did offer to accommodate the family in two separate homes, but this was declined.

“The family were therefore placed in emergency housing,” Jones said. “[The mum] agreed to end her tenancy with us so she would not have to keep paying us rent on top of the rent required for emergency accommodation.”

Jones said that based on people’s priority rating and housing needs, Kāinga Ora matches people on the housing register with homes as they become available.

The Salvation Army’s director of the social policy and parliamentary unit, Lt-Col Ian Hutson, called the situation “unacceptable”.

“There is not enough housing across the board, but it’s even more acute for larger families,” Hutson explained.

“Basically, the system doesn’t cater to larger families, they just don’t have the facilities.”

He wondered how the people involved in this family’s case could let this sort of thing happen, and said he knows of other families that have been left in emergency housing situations for “longer than they should have been”.

The Salvation Army has been pressuring the Government to raise the accommodation supplement to reflect the housing and cost of living crises, so families can escape the emergency housing system entirely.

The accommodation supplement has not been raised in the last five years, Hutson said.

National’s Bishop said this was, unfortunately, “not an uncommon story”.

“And while I sympathise with this family, every week my office receives multiple requests from Kiwis desperate for social housing. They just can’t get it.”

Bishop said the problem is systemic.

“Kāinga Ora is a very inefficient model and an inefficient organisation. They own around 65,000 homes in the country and you would think that would give them scale but it seems to be the opposite and community providers do a far better job for their tenants,” he said.

When approached for comment, Housing Minister Megan Woods’ office declined to comment and said it was Kāinga Ora’s responsibility. Both Carmel Sepuloni, the Minister for Social Development, and Peeni Henare, the Associate Housing Minister and Whānau Ora Minister, declined to comment.

Bishop also said more Kiwi kids are now living in cars.

“Jacinda Ardern said in 2017, ‘I refuse to stand by while children are sleeping in cars.’ Yet, under her watch, around 200 kids are now living in cars, up from 51 in December 2017.”

The Prime Minister’s office declined to comment on Bishop’s statement when approached by the Herald.

“It is a tragedy that any child in New Zealand is going to sleep in a car every night. Living in an emergency motel isn’t much better, but that’s the reality for around 4000 other Kiwi kids – four times as many since Labour took office.

Bishop said National will partner with the community housing sector to build more houses, “reverse Labour’s Tenant Tax and brightline test extension” and use a social investment approach to move people into transitional housing with wraparound support.

“These kids need more than just kind words and good intentions, they need a home to live in.”

Have you had issues with Kāinga Ora? Email [email protected]

- Joseph Los'e and Rachel Maher, Additional reporting RNZ