On Monday I presented a Wellington Community Champions Award (an initative of local MPs and The Wellingtonian newspaper) to Mike Leon, who runs the Wellington Night Shelter.  Mike is a quiet, unassuming guy who  in different capacities has worked for 14 years offering a bed for the night to Wellington’s homeless. Perhaps more importantly he works with the people who stay at the shelter to get their life back on track.  Part of this includes linking them up with social and medical services they despartely need.  Its hard work, sometimes the conventional path does not work, sometimes it does not always have a happy ending, but when it does it is so worthwhile.

As we were sitting with the reporter from The Wellingtonian after giving Mike the award, he passed over a piece of paper he was preparing for his monthly report to his board.  It was a graph that showed occupany per month for the year compared to the last couple of years.

Like all statistics the graph needs to be read carefully. Mike has made a few changes to the way the shelter is running that have contributed to higher occupancy, but a doubling of bed nights is something to be very concerned about.

In a city like Wellington it can be easy to assume that the recession has not had a huge effect, and that we are through the worst of it. As we sat there a 71 year old man arrived to let Mike know he would be needing a bed for the night as he had been evicted from his private accomodation. This will probably be a bed in the hallway as things are full up, but Mike will make it happen.

The answers to reducing this are complex, but it is about supporting people and getting on top of problems early in life.  But its good to know the Mike’s of this world are there to deal with it in the here and now.