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A Salvation Army report reveals that the much vaunted economic recovery is painfully uneven, with youth, Maori and Pasifika abandoned. This is the story of a single family in distress.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hails New Zealand’s relatively strong job market as the “envy of many countries.” The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 4.9 percent in the December 2020 quarter, below a peak driven by the Covid lockdown of 5.3 percent three months earlier.
But that’s not what Salvation Army social workers see on the street, according to the state of the nation report from the public welfare organization released this morning. It’s not what Dave Letele and his team at BBM Motivation in South and West Auckland are seeing. And it’s certainly not what Ray Milovale, an unemployed father of eight, is seeing.
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“I was surprised when I saw on the news that the economy is getting back to normal, that people are earning what they were earning before Covid,” Milovale says. “I am happy for them.
“But for me, and people like me, we are still trying to fight, we are still trying to recover.”
Ray and Reta Milovale lost their home in Papatoetoe in the summer before Covid. It was razed to the ground in a house fire. They lost everything and were forced to move their entire family to a cockroach-infested Manukau motel for emergency accommodation, but at least Ray Milovale had a job.
The 29-year-old had worked as a security officer until the first Covid lockdown. The organization was then forced to fire six security guards and five leasing managers, amid the shutdown.
“We’re in this together, dad.”
– Mikayla Milovale, 13 years old
Milovale was devastated. Reta was very pregnant with her eighth child. At first he did not tell his children. But after a week or two, they realized that he was not wearing his uniform and was leaving for work at six in the afternoon. They asked him, “Are you on vacation, Dad?”
So he sat the older children down and said. There were tears. But his eldest daughter Mikayla, 13, hugged him. “We’re in this together, Daddy,” she told him.
And within the Statistics NZ figures that show a decline in unemployment, there are others who are also with them. Professionals and farmers are doing better. Maori, Pasifika and young people are worse off.
The Kāinga Ora housing agency found the Milovale family a rental property in Manurewa, but that took all of Reta’s profit. The family is left with $ 76 a week for all their other bills, Milovale says, so they desperately turned to local health and wellness group BBM Motivation for help.
No one should underestimate how difficult it was for them, says BBM founder Dave Letele. “Maori and Pacific Islanders are very proud people. It’s hard to ask for help. I’m trying to tell them it’s okay, you have to ask for help.”
Letele knows what it’s like to do it hard. He grew up as the son of the president of Mongrel Mob in Auckland. As a boxer known as Brown Buttabean, he weighed 210 kg. But she learned from that to establish support programs primarily for the Maori and Pasifika communities, and she has become an inspiration to thousands of people facing their own struggles.
Now he runs his health and nutrition program for free, without the support of taxpayers, and has helped many people change their lives. The Ministry of Social Development has recognized the work of BBM’s food and welfare bank, and is providing them with some funds. And Letele strives and works with businesses and nonprofits (like Eat My Lunch, Fairfood NZ and New Zealand Foodnetwork this week) to continue to help the families who depend on him.
When Ray Milovale contacted him, he recognized his own story. So Letele has been giving the family $ 100 a week to pay for their groceries, including diapers for the three youngest. Milovale is grateful, massively and tearfully, but what he really wants is to go back to work to support his family himself.
“People who were down before Covid are even worse now,” says Letele. “That’s the fight here. I only knew him once, and I felt sorry for him. I have four children and I come from the fight, so I completely understand it.”
Salvation Army Parliamentary and Social Policy Unit Director Ian Hutson says more Maori are ending up on the waiting list for social housing or in prison. The number of children in beneficiary households increased by more than 23,000 during 2020, and Covid-19 has most strongly impacted students from schools in the lowest decile. But there is good progress, with continued declines in juvenile delinquency and teenage pregnancies.
“The poorest and most vulnerable in our nation have suffered the most from these severe Covid-19 unrest, leaving many with a bleak future,” Hutson says.
Methamphetamine drug use is prevalent, according to the Salvation Army report. More and more people are victims of crime; The police solve fewer and fewer of these crimes.
“The rich, the high-level people, are doing very well. I know because I move in both circles. But the people at the bottom are doing worse than ever. It’s a bleak prospect, when you have mothers and dads they send you messages crying. “
– Dave Letele
BBM has also delivered 17,000 food packages and 11,000 meals last year. And Letele is now working alongside the police and says she has an idea of the crime reported. The police tell him that they are seeing more and more petty crime: parents stealing food from the supermarket to feed their children.
“I would!” he says. “I would steal food for my family if we had no other means. And you ask any parent – if you had no other choice, of course you would.
“There is nothing worse than being at the bottom, in the gutter, and having no idea how you are going to get up. And then hearing what the government is talking about, how people are really doing well and the economy is recovering.”
The economic recovery talk? People buying houses and cars going on vacation to Queenstown?
“We are not seeing that,” warns Letele. “Hopefully this story will be a wake-up call because it’s not what we’re seeing. The rich, the high-level people, they are doing very well. I know because I move in both circles. But people down on the side bottom are worse than ever. It’s a bleak prospect, when moms and dads send you crying messages. “
“I had to get out of the house to talk to you, I’m parked in the parking lot, because I didn’t want my kids to see me cry … I think any parent would feel the same way if they couldn’t support my family.”
– Ray Milovale
Milovale estimates that he sends six CVs a day looking for work. “I catch up with the other people who were laid off from the same company, they are going through the same situation,” he says.
“I have a partner, his anxiety has overflowed, it hurts him even more than it does me. He has three kids and he was evicted from his rent because he couldn’t pay the rent, so they’ve been in an emergency motel room since before Christmas. .
Milovale will only drive the car when absolutely necessary, to pick up the purchase, but says his friend is even worse. “They don’t have a car, so when I get a package of food, I leave some of it with them. I have to share it with my brother.”
He talks on the phone from his car, in a parking lot next to his rental house. “I am stable at the moment, but I have had hiccups with depression and mental health. I had to leave the house to talk to you. I am parked in the parking lot because I did not want my children to see me cry.”
All she wants is to go back to work, feed her children. The youngest, Crystal, is only seven months old. “There are times when it gets too much and I have to get away from the kids, from seeing them. I think any parent would feel the same way if I couldn’t provide for my family.”
