New Zealand’s Response to Covid-19 Showed What Governments Can Do

A reflection on political will and the power of the state

Photo by Ev on Unsplash

One of the most remarkable and under-reported aspects of New Zealand’s response to Covid-19 is how the government eliminated homelessness during the lockdown period. Rough sleepers were offered places in motels, supported with mental health and other wrap-around services, and guaranteed access to food and welfare support. In a matter of days, New Zealand ‘solved’ homelessness for a period of time and protected some of its most vulnerable from a rampaging virus. The total cost of this outrageous policy success? $22 million dollars.

Of course, motel rooms are not a long-term solution to chronic homelessness, and the price tag for addressing the various causes of homelessness is undoubtedly much higher. But it’s still noteworthy that the cost of eradicating national homelessness for over a month was less than the price of former Prime Minister John Key’s mansion in leafy Parnell. The truth is that the state has always had the capacity to emphatically address homelessness and even eradicate it altogether. $22 million is a tiny fraction of the government’s budget. Homelessness is a solvable public policy issue, and the government did solve it — temporarily at least — in 2020. The real question is why it took a global pandemic to force the issue.

One answer is that politics in New Zealand and around the world is constrained by the self-preservation instinct of politicians to never rock the boat. Another way of thinking about this is the Overton Window: the range of policies acceptable to the mainstream public at any given time. The Overton Window helps explain why current PM Jacinda Ardern takes such limp public positions when asked about house prices. She will lament the rise and rise of the housing market and categorically rule out any changes in the same breath. Labour’s calculation is that while people love to moan about house prices, a policy that would actually stop prices from rising would be too politically unpopular to implement, even if it’s demonstrably the right thing to do. C’est la vie.

However, things changed when the pandemic struck. Threatening both a health and economic crisis, Covid-19 splintered the Overton Window as states…