Ani O’Brien’s weird take on homelessness
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11:14 am, August 12th, 2025 - 28 comments
Categories: housing, poverty, Social issues, the praiseworthy and the pitiful -
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Ani O’Brien thinks that claims by Green co leader Chloe Swarbrick that the Government is intentionally increasing homelessness are engaging in hyperbole and are not true.
From her substack:
Chlöe Swarbrick wants you to believe the Government is intentionally increasing homelessness. She told RNZ’s Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes:
“The only conclusion that I can really come to is that this Government has intentionally increased homelessness…”
It’s the kind of soundbite that plays well on social media. Outrage travels faster than nuance, and a short clip of a politician expressing moral disgust can ricochet around Instagram far quicker than a spreadsheet full of complex data. But the problem with this particular claim is that it’s not just hyperbolic, it’s deeply irresponsible. It also leans on numbers that don’t mean what she’s implying they mean, and are in no way comparable to the “homelessness” figures quoted overseas. It’s a classic case of comparing apples with oranges.
She then engages in some statistical analysis of sorts.
She comes up with some statistics which of themselves could be accused of comparing apples with oranges. For instance she notes that emergency motel use ballooned from fewer than 1,000 households in 2017 to over 4,000 by 2022 under Labour and the Green’s oversight. Note to Ani, one person in a motel room is by definition one less homeless person. You are using the wrong statistic, an orange when you should be using an apple.
Yes the public wait list grew. There are major concerns that National manipulated the wait list to take people off it. The problem was still there, it was just not being measured properly.
But her conclusion, that it is not true that the Government is intentionally increasing homeless is difficult to understand.
First up homelessness has recently increased and in some cases significantly. Auckland for instance has seen a 90% increase in homelessness in the past year.
O’Brien refers to the Homelessness Insights Report which was recently released.
As I noted previously the report concludes that homelessness has increased by a rate which is greater than the rate of population growth. In a footnote it concedes that the actual number may be higher as undercounting is likely to affect all categories of severe housing deprivation.
The report notes concerns expressed by the housing sector about increasing levels of hopelessness, alongside increases in clients with complex needs due to methamphetamine use, anti-social behaviour and severe mental health concerns.
It is hard to understand how someone can claim that homelessness has not increased. The evidence is all around us.
And here is the kicker. There are Government decisions that can be pointed to which have directly contributed to the problem.
For instance kicking the homeless out of motels when they have nowhere else to live is going to increase homelessness. Nothing is more certain.
And the Government has brought in this cruel policy requirement that if a person has “contributed to their emergency housing need” then they are not eligible for emergency housing.
As I noted previously in March 2025 32% applications for emergency housing were declined. This figure was 4 percent in March 2024. 22.5% of these declines were because “the applicant’s circumstances could have been reasonably foreseen” which includes “where the household is determined to have contributed to their emergency housing need”. Essentially when a poor person contributes to their need by not paying rent this Government’s rationale is they should lose any right to seek emergency housing.
Add to this the upending of Kainga Ora’s building program where the pipeline of much needed houses has been crunched. This will only make things worse.
And rising unemployment and proactively harming wage and salary levels for ordinary people are taking steam out of the economy and hitting the poorest hard.
National’s line, which O’Brien mimics is that “homelessness is complex and there are a number of different causes”. It is and there are but some of the major contributions are clearly Government policy changes.
National wants it both ways. Practised cruelty on the poorest among us on the basis they have “contributed” to the problem. Starving institutions of resources so they can give tax cuts to landlords. Then blaming everyone else for the problem as the repercussions of their cruelty become clear. And then they display feigned hurt when Chloe Swarbrick calls them out on it.
Yep, O'Brien, being hard right wing and therefore closely aligned with all member parties of the coalition knows that homelessness, people on the street, people living in cars is one of the very big weaknesses of this and all National-led governments.
The optics of desperate people in desperate need is what got the Key/English government thrown out last time and the same is very likely to happen again. This prompts the usual suspects like O'Brien and others to run interference.
I think Chloe’s choice of words may have been unfortunate, and has maybe given the right juuust enough wriggle room to try and split hairs on the issue.
While it’s absolutely obvious that homelessness has drastically increased over the last two years as a direct consequence of this government’s policy choices, “intentionally increasing homelessness” lets them sidestep the substance and focus on semantics, as Ani O'Brien has tried desperately to do.
It would have been much harder to wriggle out of if Chloe had instead accused the government of negligence and willful ignorance: because that’s exactly what we’re seeing.
When you slash welfare, cut off emergency accommodation for people with nowhere else to go, depress wages and working conditions, and deliberately implement policies that push vulnerable people into crisis, you may not be setting out to create homelessness… but you are knowingly and willingly letting it happen.
And that’s every bit as damning.
It may well be the most effective attack on the coalition isn't that they're evil, scummy wannabe fascists (even though they are). But instead, that they are cruel, insensitive, uncaring, and out of touch with the day to day realities of many New Zealanders.
Framing it this way also avoids triggering the right-wing voter tendency to leap onto their high horses when they feel their character is under attack. Instead, the story becomes about betrayal: how those voters were promised competence, compassion, and real solutions to their problems, but instead got cruelty, neglect, moral turpitude, and policies that have made life harder.
In political communication, that’s a small but important distinction.
Communication is a two-way street. There's not much wriggle room in the actual statement, out of context we can make it a meme because too few people actually want to understand what was actually said:
https://action.greens.org.nz/stop_homelessness
That's the whole point though.
If you say shit your opponents can take out of context as a defense against your criticism, then they will.
It is uncharacteristically rhetorically clumsy of Chloe to give NACT an out like that.
It's a bad and inaccurate defence, and it is characteristically regular that the Greens are criticised for bad faith interpretations of their entirely accurate statements.
The desperation of the government and their supporters is evident, as evident as their responsibility for the increase in homelessness.
There is no change in tone or rhetoric, short of avoiding criticising the government entirely, that would stop the patronising of the Greens for their passion.
All of which is absolutely true.
But good political strategy is about being able to acknowledge and work to the environment you're in. Which is not always the one you want.
Chloe never said they are 'evil, scummy or wannabe fascists', this is your own patronising inference. Your 'reframing' above IS what was said in the interview but what she said is actually more accurate because the Government can't claim ignorance, they were informed by their own agencies what would happen!
When people of all political stripes see utility in misinterpreting you there is no winning, so it is best just to do what you believe is right.
Yes, it was surprisingly rhetorically clumsy. I can picture the current Cabinet absolutely not caring that their policies increase homelessness, but the idea that increased homelessness was an actual intent of the policies is just implausible.
That's exactly it.
Why try accuse your opponents of being evil, when you can accuse them of being careless and stupid instead?
lol, and prove they're careless and stupid.
There's "careless", and then there's "I do not care", which trips off the PM's tongue more often than I would like. Imho, CoC MPs cannot claim stupidity as a defense – they know what they’re doing alright.
But not caring about homelessness is evil.
Intentionally setting out to increase homelessness is also evil, but more so. Wanting to make people suffer is worse than not caring if they do.
But intention is not a straightforward thing. If you take action that you could have reasonably been expected to know would cause homelessness, does that constitute intention to cause homelessness? I'm not sure, but it might. You can have an intention to do something even if it is not your central objective, because it is a means to an end.
Given this is so nuanced, Chloe should have been more careful. But frankly I don't give a rat's if she let her completely justified anger get the better of her for a moment.
Therein lies the problem. Not that Chloe was incorrect, or that her anger wasn't justified, or that the coalition are really just misunderstood paragons of good and right.
I agree that the coalition are as vapid, feckless, and cruel as they are incompetent. And are, without a doubt, the worst government in our political history.
But casting aspersions on their intentions allows them to obfuscate the issue by playing stupid games with semantics.
I'm in the Swarbrick comms problem camp. Maybe NACTF do intentionally want homelessness to increase, because it serves the shift to fascism by creating chaos and more poverty. But is there evidence that this is what the government is intending? Or is it more likely that it's gross negligence, incompetence, and ideological blindness?
We know the latter is true. Come on stupid people, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and if you won't, we will give you an incentive. Woops, social issues just got worse.
If the intention is the pathway to fascism, we should talk about that. But I don't think it's something the co-leader of the GP can do publicly. And how would that even happen in multiple caucuses without it being leaked? I think the big risk for NZ is that the rise of fascism happens first not overtly, but by ideology and social engineering. Nat's caucus aren't sitting there plotting a rise in homelessness, but their worldview makes it and fascism inevitable if not stopped. I think Swarbrick got the challenge wrong this time, and agree with RP that it allows the right to continue what they are doing.
Ideological blindness, or the blind pursuit of an ideological position is intentional and is different to negligence and incompetence which could be viewed as unintentional, if it were in your interest to view it that way.
if it's intentional to create more homelessness, what is the purpose of this intent?
Weka, it is not possible to vote if you have no abode.
It is hard to get a benefit without an address to be "served".
It is hard to keep your phone or tablet charged if you have no vehicle.
So there are many ways for no abode folk to become "lost" in the system.
This government has by their chosen austerity for Public services made things far worse. Plus they removed the Reserve Bank having to consider employment and wellbeing.
The charities report a new tranche of those who have been tipped into this by the mass sackings and shrinking value of assets, failing businesses in the services and manufacturing sector.
So yes this government has used unemployment to help lower the interest rate and take spending out of the economy a direct cause of increased homelessness.
They have done this during uncertain times, and it will be worse than they thought as we now have tariffs and increased defence spending to deal with.
Their well heeled cronies have not come with fists full of money to buy our businesses and or land cheaply during the down turn, as their world has become more bearish with two war fronts making things uncertain.
The sorted are not spending, so next station stagflation.
Even our land sales are tainted by earthquakes and large weather events, wilding pines and pests.
So we are stalled, and homelessness is one outcome. Well predicted through those policies that were followed against advice.
The rest of Chlöe Swarbrick’s quote is important to understand what’s she saying and where she’s coming from:
YouTube transcript
Thanks for the Post, MickySavage!
do you think it's intentional?
Short answer: YES!
Come down on these sophists with a sledgehammer of righteous anger!
Their policy has been to stop construction and particularly public housing, canceling projects everywhere and casting doubt on the corporation that provides it.
They’ve talked about getting rid of emergency housing. They don’t know where people on housing wait lists have gone.
It’s similar to their deflationary and austere policies effect on employment. Lower consumption, fewer jobs, money out of the system into billionaires property, underemployment…this literally their policies.
The same with housing. Their policy is to make the poor invisible in the statistics. They’ve congratulated themselves on reducing waiting lists, by throwing people off the list.
This is a government who castigates everyone: the poor, teachers, nurses, doctors and councils, for not accepting a worse life, while they funnel money up and to tobacco companies and landlords.
Yet they take no responsibility for anything. There’s not a thing where they have committed to do something as a moral priority.
Let the words of Helen Clark sting and let us have leaders who are not for surrender and appeasement before surrendering.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360788445/after-going-gaza-border-and-seeing-aid-get-turned-back-helen-clark-had-withering-words-nz
Is this o'brien woman not too bright? Yes 4000 people in motels under labour and a lot of state housing being built to house people. It was a mammoth task and not solved in 6 months. Now way less people in motels under national and new state house building grinding to a halt. Hmmmmm, maybe the homeless people just vanished into thin air.
Vanished….yes. And really what do Potaka/NACT1 care? As long as they have..gone.
And Good on Chloe. IMO she is awesome : )
What's interesting about the comments in this thread is the intentional tripping up of Swarbrick and the Greens for political purposes.
Some things never change.
What’s really interesting about the comments in this thread is how quickly any suggestion that moral earnestness doesn’t automatically equal great political strategy gets treated as some kind of hostile act . To the point where people start questioning the motives of anyone offering a bit of context or analysis.
But hey, if you want to go off tilting at windmills then that's your choice. ¡Vamos, Rocinante!
Absolutely questioning the motives, and values.
Ok then, brave Don Quixote.
Spare me the “NACTs under the bed” crap. Please, tell me why you think I offered my analysis.
I'm not some sort of National Party apologist. I’m simply a pissed-off lefty who hates watching an important talking point get undermined by sloppy messaging and fed into the coalition’s hair-splitting, semantic-fudging outrage machine.
If I’m harsh on Chloe, it’s because I know she’s far better, and smarter, than that.
I think Ms O'Brien's rightwing credentials are well established. I can't be bothered writing any more about her dubious beliefs.
As for PsycoMilt's comment, "…but the idea that increased homelessness was an actual intent of the policies is just implausible" – doesn't really wash.
A drunk driver has no intention of causing a crash which injures, maims, or kills another person(s) – but that is a natural, predictable, consequence of their irresponsible actions.
The actions of this rotten government may not be deliberately intended to cause negative, harmful consequences – but they're rather predictable.
In fact, the Police have just admitted this today: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/569912/police-blame-job-cuts-for-not-following-cabinet-s-orders-to-improve-asset-management