'Are we listening?' Faith, politics and the fight for a home in Aotearoa

Wellington's Anglican Cathedral of St Paul gathered two archbishops, front-line workers, and five election candidates to wrestle with a question the country keeps failing to answer: why, in a land with the resources to house everyone, are people dying on the streets without a home?

The Election Housing Forum 2026, convened by the Catholic Diocese of Wellington and hosted by St Paul's, was billed as a chance for the public to hear the parties' housing pitches before the 7 November election. Housing was framed not as a line item or a market to be managed, but as a human right and as the foundation on which people are meant to flourish and reach the potential God intends for them.

Anglican Archbishop Justin Duckworth, welcoming the room and set the tone in personal terms. We come together, he said, "because we want to wrestle for a world that we so want our children and our grandchildren to live into."

Catholic Archbishop Paul Martin told the gathering "A house does not make a home," recalling his own childhood in a warm-lounged, freezing-everywhere-else 1930s stucco house in Hastings, "but it is very hard to make a home without one." In the last couple of months, he noted, four rough sleepers have died on New Zealand streets "people who had no place to call home and nowhere to go."

For Archbishop Paul, the crisis is a matter of theology before it is a matter of policy. Drawing on Catholic social teaching and on Pope Leo who has urged Christians to move beyond "isolated acts of charity" toward "a constant attitude of encountering Christ in those who have nowhere to live".

"Housing every person in society should not be a matter solely of charity," he said, "but one of justice.

"Our country has the resources. How they are allocated and prioritised is what politics is all about."

Before the politicians spoke, the forum handed the microphone to those who meet the crisis daily and the picture they painted was stark.

Natalia Cleland, chief executive of Downtown Community Ministry, reported a 40% increase in rough sleeping in Wellington over two years. Between April and June this year alone, DCM interacted with 181 people sleeping rough. She described how a single DCM staff member contacted more than 470 private landlords between January and July, seeking homes for the organisation's Housing First tenants and secured just 35 leases. "That's not a lack of trying," she said. "That represents a housing sector that is not particularly willing to provide housing to the most marginalised people."

Despite that, she said, DCM has housed more than 70 people in permanent homes this year through Housing First. "Together we can end homelessness," she said, quoting her organisation's byline. "Yes, we can. This is something we can commit to doing."

Alicia Sutton, chief executive of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services, a network of more than 100 faith-based providers, gave the national scale. Around 473,000 people, a population greater than Christchurch, are living in material hardship. Beneficiaries spend, on average, 48% of their income on housing. Social housing makes up only around 4% of the national housing stock, against 7–8% in comparable OECD countries. "The solutions are within reach," she said. "We can build more social houses."

Speaking for Ngāti Toa, Jennie Smeaton, deputy chief executive of Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, told those gathered, "A home is more than a roof over our heads; it is the foundation for safety, well-being, belonging and opportunity." Her call to government was to trust those closest to the problem iwi, hapū, churches and community organisations and she reached for the words of Kahurangi Tariana Turia: "The solution lies within ourselves, within our whānau, our hapū and our communities."

Disability advocate Mike Gourley, with more than 40 years' lived experience, reminded the room that a warm, dry home is not enough if a wheelchair can't get through the door. Housing must be both affordable and accessible, he said, "and any incoming government should work with us to work out the solutions together."

Labour's Kieran McAnulty, hoping to be the next housing minister, called housing "the most important thing that a government can provide." Investment in homes, he argued, must be seen not as a cost but as an investment in people: "There could be the next world champion. There could be the next Prime Minister… but they will never reach their potential if they don't have a home."

McAnulty put the case for housing as the foundation beneath every other public service. "It doesn't matter how good your health system is if, once people have received treatment, they go back to living in a car, or to a home that is cold and damp," he said. "And it doesn't matter how good your education system is if our tamariki are bouncing between three, four or five houses a year, how can they be expected to learn and reach their potential?" There is, he argued, "a real human cost, as well as an economic cost," when a country fails to ensure "every New Zealander has a place to call home."

National's Tama Potaka, Minister for Māori Development, leaned on delivery over ambition, pointing to a funded pipeline of community and iwi-Māori housing and to Hamilton, where the number of children in emergency motels had fallen from 756 to around 100. He was the evening's most conspicuous dissenter when the audience raised its "yes" and "no" signs, declining to commit to a target of 3,000 new social and affordable homes a year. "This is what we have funded," he said, "and hand on heart, I can say that's what we're going to do."

The Greens' Julie Anne Genter said housing had "always" been, for her party, a human right, and tied the fix to tax reform so "those who are currently acquiring and hoarding the most are actually paying their fair share." Te Pāti Māori's Lisa Marie Murch put a human face on the numbers: of more than 100,000 people in homelessness across Aotearoa, 35,000 are Māori — "the district of Ashburton," she said, "all of them Māori, homeless." Her party would build 2,000 homes a year on Māori land in partnership with iwi. The Opportunity Party's Bob Mason, recalled an economist telling him there was "zero homelessness" in his town in 1979. "Politics is the art of the possible," Mason said. "If it was possible back then… it is absolutely possible in 2026."

Facilitator Paul Gilberd, of Community Housing Aotearoa, made three clear asks of the politicians: build 3,000 social and affordable homes a year, set a dated target to end homelessness with annual public reporting, and commit to a cross-party, long-term national housing plan.

The evening closed with Baptist national leader Chris Chamberlain challenging those gathered in the pews. "It's high time we, the church, did more in this realm," he said. "It is amazing how many churches in this country religiously, passionately, devotedly mow the grass for Jesus behind the church hall. It's time we built something on that grass."

He turned to Scripture to bracket the whole discussion. In Luke 4, what he called Jesus' "Nazareth Manifesto," a kind of maiden speech, Jesus declares he has come "to bring good news to the poor." And in Matthew 25, at the close of his ministry, Jesus tells the faithful: "When you did it for the least of these, you did it for me." Jesus "begins with reference to the vulnerable, and he ends with reference to the vulnerable," Chamberlain said. "The question tonight is: are we listening?"

His closing prayer echoed this, "Continue to make us uncomfortable," he asked God, "until we have solved this particular problem, which is solvable. We pray for those tonight who do not have a home. Guard them, protect them, save them and use people like us to do it."