Letter to the New Zealand Herald (published 9 June 2026)

On Friday morning, I walked from the Valley Rd precinct in Dominion Rd to the Balmoral shops, down one side and back the other.

In that roughly 40 minutes, I encountered four street-living men. Going up one side one was sitting in a doorway quietly eating and maybe begging; another was sitting under cover of a public building with all his worldly belongings in a supermarket trolley. On my way back, one younger man was pushing his trolley along with all his belongings including a guitar, and the fourth man stood gesticulating and shouting incoherently into the void.

These men were all of colour, dishevelled, bearded, in semi-ragged clothes, and three of them had greying hair.

I have lived in this area for 45 years and I have never seen anything like this before.

At no time did I feel in danger; but obviously our society is at risk as we halt the building of social housing and increase rents, remove people from emergency motel housing, ask the police not to handle the mentally ill and “move people along”.

In American cities, the homeless often congregate in tents in public places. I have even seen it here in front of the central city public library on occasion. Is this New Zealand the way we want it?

Peter Davis, Kingsland.