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“When the State Abandons Its People, Libraries Become Refuge” - 6 August 2025

The Cruel Mathematics of Neoliberal Austerity: Where Dignity Goes to Die

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

06 Aug 2025 — 13 min read

Kia ora whakatōhea katoa. Greetings, fellow guardians against oppression.

When libraries become homeless shelters and librarians become social workers, we are witnessing not compassion but the grotesque failure of a colonial system that abandons its most vulnerable while protecting the wealth of its masters.

The Real Emergency: Structural Violence Disguised as Natural Disaster

Judith Galtry's encounter at Wellington's library with a homeless person hoarding books reveals far more than individual hardship - it exposes the barbaric mechanics of neoliberal capitalism eating its own tail. When 112,496 New Zealanders are severely housing deprived1 and one in every 1000 people lacks shelter entirely2, we are not dealing with individual failures but systemic genocide by policy.

The most damning statistics reveal the colonial heart of this crisis: Māori constitute 43% of Auckland's homeless population while representing only 11% of the city's residents 3. This is not coincidence - it is the predictable outcome of 150 years of economic warfare against tangata whenua.

Māori are nearly 3 times overrepresented in Auckland homelessness compared to their proportion of the national population

Libraries as Colonial Battlegrounds

Galtry describes libraries as no longer "elite bastions of order and quiet" but frontline zones of social exclusion. This transformation masks a deeper truth: libraries have always been colonial institutions, designed to impose European ways of knowing while marginalising Indigenous knowledge systems. Now, as the welfare state crumbles under neoliberal assault, these same institutions become reluctant sanctuaries for those discarded by capitalism.

US sociologist Eric Klinenberg's work on libraries as "palaces for the people"4 inadvertently reveals the perverse logic of late-stage capitalism: public infrastructure designed for education and culture must now provide basic survival needs because housing, healthcare, and social services have been commodified beyond reach.

When librarians are told to turn community libraries into makeshift homes for homeless during opening hours 5, we witness the state's cynical abandonment of its duty to provide shelter while expecting underpaid library workers to fill the gap.

The Luxon-Bishop-Potaka Axis of Cruelty

The current National-ACT coalition's response to homelessness exemplifies neoliberal sadism masquerading as fiscal responsibility. Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka have orchestrated a calculated campaign of cruelty disguised as "ending the blight of emergency housing."

Their policy changes have resulted in a 53% increase in rough sleeping in Auckland between September 2024 and January 2025 6, while emergency housing applications are being denied at rates of 32%1. Potaka himself has acknowledged that "many" link the government's emergency housing policy to rising homelessness 7, yet refuses to take responsibility for the human devastation his policies create.

This is not incompetence - it is deliberate. By making homelessness invisible through policy manipulation, the government attempts to solve the "problem" by disappearing the people rather than addressing the causes.

The Neoliberal Machine Feeding on Human Misery

The housing crisis cannot be understood without examining its roots in the neoliberal revolution that began in the 1980s. Ruth Richardson's 1991 "mother of all budgets" marked the beginning of New Zealand's transition from a property-owning democracy to a rentier oligarchy 8. The privatisation of the State's $2.4 billion mortgage portfolio - the second largest asset sale of that era - directly created the conditions for today's homelessness epidemic.

Since 1991, home ownership rates have fallen to their lowest level in almost 60 years, with 65% of new households formed between 1991 and 2015 becoming tenant households 8. This represents a fundamental restructuring of wealth distribution, transferring assets from working people to property-owning elites.

David Seymour's recent call to overcome "squeamishness about privatisation"9 signals the next phase of this assault, targeting healthcare and education for corporate capture while homeless people shelter in public libraries.

Colonial Continuity: From Land Wars to Housing Wars

The overrepresentation of Māori in homelessness statistics is not aberrant but entirely consistent with colonial capitalism's logic. When Māori face "existing systematic barriers that prevent access to services and result in worse outcomes" even within Housing First programmes 10, we see the persistent operation of colonial structures designed to exclude tangata whenua from basic rights.

The colonial state's violence has simply evolved from military conquest to economic dispossession. Where once British settlers seized Māori land through warfare and legislation, today's neoliberal capitalism achieves the same result through market mechanisms and policy exclusion.

Research shows Māori clients in Housing First programmes had "higher charge rates per offending on average" and "were more likely to be crime victims" after being housed 10, revealing how institutional racism operates even within supposedly supportive interventions.

The Mana of Resistance: Reclaiming Our Spaces

From a Māori worldview, libraries housing homeless people represents both crisis and opportunity. The principle of manaakitanga - hospitality and care for visitors - suggests libraries fulfilling this role may be more aligned with Indigenous values than their original colonial purpose.

Yet we must not romanticise this situation. When "Day Centres" like Open Arms in Whangārei function as "Pou Whirinaki" (pillars of strength) for homeless Māori 11, they demonstrate how Indigenous communities create care networks despite, not because of, state policy.

The challenge lies in transforming these emergency responses into permanent alternatives to colonial capitalism. This requires moving beyond liberal sympathy for individual homeless people toward structural analysis of the systems creating homelessness.

Beyond Band-Aids: Systemic Transformation

Galtry's question about "limits to democratisation" of libraries reveals the fundamental limitation of liberal thinking. Under capitalism, all public resources are scarce because wealth concentrates upward. True democratisation requires dismantling the systems that create scarcity through artificial inequality.

The government's celebration of getting "1000 children out of motels" while being unable to track where these children now live 12 exemplifies how neoliberal policy creates illusions of progress while abandoning vulnerable whānau to market forces.

The Māori Green Lantern fighting misinformation and disinformation from the far right

Call to Action: Kaitiaki Rising

Libraries cannot solve homelessness because homelessness is not a housing problem - it is a capitalism problem. Until we address the fundamental structures that prioritise property rights over human rights, libraries will remain reluctant refuges for capitalism's casualties.

We must demand:

Immediate reversal of emergency housing cuts
Massive public housing construction programme
Wealth taxes on property speculators
Recognition of housing as a human right, not a commodity
Māori-led solutions acknowledging colonial roots of housing inequality

The homeless person building book fortresses in Wellington's library is not seeking charity but claiming space in a system designed to exclude them. This is resistance, not pathology.

As tangata whenua and all people of conscience, we must transform libraries from colonial institutions into genuine community centres serving people's needs - including the need for shelter, dignity, and belonging.

The choice is clear: continue the colonial project of dispossession and abandonment, or build something new based on manaakitanga, whakatōhea, and aroha for all our people.

Koha

For those who find value in this analysis and wish to support continued kaitiaki work exposing the violence of colonial capitalism, please consider offering koha to HTDM: 03-1546-0415173-000. The MGL understands these tough economic times for whānau, so please only contribute if you have capacity and wish to do so.

Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui.

Ivor Jones
Te Māori Green Lantern
Kaitiaki exposing misinformation, white supremacy, racism, and neoliberalism

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