What happens when you're on the waiting list for a state house and you have nowhere else to go?
Apanui Koopu has written about his experience for E-Tangata, saying it's time for change.
From Tauranga Moana, Koopu is a single dad with a teenage daughter, who he homeschools.
Becoming homeless was a gradual process, he says.
Apanui Koopu. Photo: Supplied.
Listen to the full interview
"I'd been dealing with Work and Income, MSD, and my relationship with them was, they were going to help me into housing. At a particular point in time, we were meant to move into a hotel which they called transitional housing.
"We get there on the day and there was no paperwork done basically, and we got turned away.
"I had nowhere to go."
In the car was his co-parenting partner and his 14-year-old. Koopu says he nearly had a breakdown.
"Work and Income had basically turned their back on us, we weren't getting replies from them, we couldn't even get hardship."
It's an injustice, he says - something that shouldn't be happening with all of the resources out there.
"When we became homeless, we were moving around carparks and when people started looking at us in an odd way we would move.
"I felt like an alien in my own country...they look at you like you're a nuisance."
Things became extra complicated when MSD said he and his ex-partner needed to sign something to say they are a couple otherwise his benefit would be cut, Koopu says. The pair aren't a couple but were living together in order to better support their daughter, he says.
He says over time he has seen his daughter's excitement for education slowly decline.
"Seeing my family suffer, it was hard enough, we're not settled now."
After reaching out for help, Koopu is now sharing a room with his daughter in his father's state house - a room with black mold.
But there'll be many families out sleeping rough this winter, "Regardless of what's happened in the Budget and a lot of nice promises", he says.
Koopu has been on the social housing waiting list for two years and has been told by a lawyer he could be waiting six years.
Asked what would make a difference in his life right now, the answer was simple - housing.
"Just a place where you could actually just relax, living out of hotels, that concept it just does so much to a person over time.
"It's a dream now for me to walk around in my own home, a place we could call home, that's almost just a dream."