Auckland’s homeless census and Western Initiative will achieve little – Tamihere
No doubt a major article will be forwarded from council to Stuff in regards to the latest charm offensive by the city.
As you will know, mayor Phil Goff and his band of 1000 men, women and children, went to carry out a census on the homeless.
But the day they announced that plan, and the day they announced the day it would be executed, was the day the homeless would have hidden from them.
The publicity stunt carried out by council is pathetic on the basis of the social housing cap the city has placed on its land.
It means that some bureaucrat, supported by the mayor and this council have determined that poor people, super annuitants on fixed incomes, beneficiaries or Aucklanders earning under $70,000, have no place living on ratepayers’ land.
As a consequence, the census on the homeless must take into effect that mayor Goff and this council have determined that the old, the beneficiaries and the working poor are not welcome anywhere on council land.
John Tamihere says the the Western Initiative is a drop in the ocean in tackling the youth unemployment rate.
You will hear more about this rort in the next wee while.
Meanwhile, the council is trying to target unemployed youth in West Auckland with the Western Initiative.
It should be renamed the Western Front though because out here, we are bogged down in a quagmire of trench warfare that’s going nowhere.
Unbeknown to most Westies, the Western Initiative was announced at a function at the old Waitākere City Building on August 15, 2018.
What is the Western Initiative?
Good question because no one knows.
What we do know is that $5 million over the next 10 years has been allocated to work on the Western Initiative.
That works out to roughly $2 per person, per year, living out West. Not a lot is going to happen with that.
It seems to me that over time, a number of our representatives in city hall have been there for so long, they become like the furniture in the Ngāti Whātua Room at the Council – seen better days.
Unbeknown to them, they become institutionalised and then become a part of the bureaucracy, rather than being flag bearers for the west.