Down and Out on Queen Street

The blue and white Police tape was stretched between two lampposts on Queen Street, causing the early morning commuters to step into the road as they passed. Most of them slowed to sneak a peek behind the heavy green tarpaulin erected there where Policemen in full body white overalls were busily marking out bloodspots and placing samples carefully into plastic bags and test tubes.

Billy’s body had been removed four hours earlier. It had lain there under a woollen blanket since it was discovered by a staff member from Dunkin Donuts who was locking up for the night when he made a ghastly discovery in the shop’s doorway.

Dunkin Donuts was closed for the day out of respect and the inability of customers to get past the forensics team to their front door. The McDonald’s next door, being McDonalds, was open, having used free hamburgers as a tool to negotiate that the Police tape got moved two metres to the right and that their door was unimpeded.

Fifteen police officers and three paramedics worked on Billy’s body from the time it was discovered to the time they wrapped up and removed the tape and tarpaulin. Donuts were back on the menu when the evening commuters were walking back down Queen Street.

So Billy got far more attention from the public service after he died than he had ever received when he was alive. Billy was homeless. Originally from Samoa, he had come to New Zealand to work in a meat packing plant in South Auckland that closed when its owners realised that they could do the same thing for half the cost elsewhere. Inability to pay rent had pushed him onto the streets and then a growing addiction to methamphetamines had driven him further into the dark underbelly of Auckland’s homeless sub culture.

Queen Street is the financial centre of Auckland and also hosts shops selling Hermes’s handbags for $8,000 and Swiss watches that cost so much that you would need a Swiss bank account to fund them. In the daytime it heaves with pedestrians walking six abreast along its broad footpath. Office workers mingle with students, tourists and shoppers and the colours and faces of the whole world can be found there.

But at night, when the shoppers and office workers have gone home, a different group descends upon the street, clutching tattered old sleeping bags and dog eared blankets. They all seem to have their own allotted doorway where they try to find shelter from the rain and wind that charges up Queen Street like a cavalry battalion on its way to war.

Homelessness is a global phenomenon of course, but I have never seen it in the quantity or state of destitution as you witness in Auckland.

It jars of course against the traditional view of New Zealand. This country likes to describe the place as “Godzone” in the same way as Australian’s describe their homeland as “The Lucky Country” and Ireland thinks of itself as “a little piece of heaven that fell out of the sky.” None of these are entirely accurate of course, unless a lucky country describes finding yourself in a vast land full of bounteous mineral deposits and squandering the resulting benefits. Godzone and a little piece of heaven suggest that God actually exists and is careless about his real estate and doesn’t mind having his name shared with a laser tag venue.

The advertising associated with Godzone focusses on mountains and rivers, comely maidens doing tribal dances and the All Blacks. It never includes a photo of Queen Street at 1am. It’s the country most Kiwis would prefer not to think about. The dark world that comes out at night when they are tucked in bed dreaming of sheep.

By the following morning, the street was back to normal. Stressed office workers grabbed overpriced coffee on their way to team meetings. Tourists huddled around a map on every corner. And bleary eyed Chinese gamblers stumbled into the daylight from the windowless casino at Skycity as they made their way to the Hermes shop to spend their winnings.

Amongst them you could find Billy’s friends, emerging from doorways and dark alleys with their worldly belongings on their back. Many of them had left flowers at the spot where Billy fell and some of them were gathered to swap rumours about his demise and tell tales of happier times. The Police were around and asking questions. But they weren’t really interested in answers. The case had already been filed under “Another homeless guy gets high and falls and bangs his head.”

I live near a large park that has a toilet block and a shower. Battered old camper vans and dented cars turn up each night and families sleep there. There are many more people in New Zealand who live in garages or garden sheds, pushed out of normal housing by unemployment or the high costs of rents and unavailability of social housing. But in many ways, they are lucky ones, clinging to at least a remnant of warmth and shelter. Billy and his friends are at the bottom of this social ladder and Auckland is a cold and wet city in winter and doorways don’t come with mattresses.

I don’t have all the answers of course and I’m not arrogant enough to roll up in a new country and tell them how to run their affairs. Many people will be sleeping on the streets of Dublin tonight for example and many people will be in on the streets of Auckland handing out sandwiches and hot soup. I won’t be and therefore I’m part of the problem. But it can’t be beyond the talents of the Irish or New Zealand governments to solve a problem that affects 1% of the population.

Billy sparked a little flurry of interest by falling and banging his head on a busy street. It’s just a shame that I and everyone else here didn’t show enough interest in him when he was alive.