Abstract
Since 2013 a series of reports have been written analysing how Severe Housing Deprivation (SHD) or homelessness can be estimated from Aotearoa New Zealand Census data. The primary focus of this report is to examine the outcomes in three government domains – Health, Justice, and Social Development of people who have been categorised as in SHD. It examines how consistent the outcomes for the Census measure of population in SHD are in comparison to known populations, who have experienced homelessness.
There are two secondary focuses. The report also:
• Briefly reviews and documents updates to the definition of SHD
• Begins to explore the dynamic between housing deprivation type and interaction with the three government domains.
This work has taken place inside a dynamic sector where government and NGO responses to SHD and homelessness have been through multiple changes.
The structure of this short report is:
• Section 2 provides an overview of the construct and operationalisation of the census measure of SHD.
• Section 3 sets out the method by which the population experiencing SHD under the census measure has compared to other populations of people known to have experienced homelessness.
• Section 4 describes the results
• Section 5 discusses the results, focusing around three main issues: the construction of the estimates of service usage, the utility of the SHD census measure, and what the SHD census measure tells us about the population experiencing homelessness.
• Section 6 is a brief conclusion.