A child arrives at school in uniform, but the night before she slept in a makeshift shelter with her father and was frightened by rodents.

It is the kind of experience most people will never see.

For Ani Stace, chair of the Te Paiaka Lived Experienced Panel for Homelessness, it is one of the reasons World Homeless Day matters.

Because homelessness in Tauranga is about far more than people sleeping rough on the streets, she said. “Everyone’s got a story.”

Te Paiaka and Under the Stars will host a free community event at Jordan Field, Memorial Park, from 12pm to 4pm on October 10, to bring together people experiencing housing hardship, support services and the wider community.

The event is about connection, support and awareness, offering free kai (food), information and donation stations.

Stace said the aim was to bridge the gap between people experiencing housing hardship and those who want to understand more and help.

“We need to actually look behind the myths and look at the people that are there,” she said.

The Western Bay of Plenty Primary Health Organisation team at the 2025 Homeless Day event at Jordan Field, Memorial Park.

Homelessness can include rough sleeping, but also overcrowded or unsafe housing, couch surfing, temporary accommodation and having no fixed abode.

Stats NZ uses the term severe housing deprivation for people living in situations where they have no other options for safe and secure housing. Its definition includes people without shelter, in temporary accommodation, sharing accommodation with another household, or living in uninhabitable housing.

Stace said the hidden nature of housing hardship made it difficult to know exactly how many people in Tauranga were affected.

She estimated between 400 and 600 people could be directly affected locally, while acknowledging the lack of reliable local data. “It’s quite a hidden number,” she said.

“You know, all it takes is for you to walk the streets and you can see that people are having to sleep outside, and that’s the part you can see.”

She said families could also be moving between friends and relatives, sometimes trying to keep children in school while dealing with unstable housing.

An event to bring together people experiencing housing hardship, support services and the wider community will be held on October 10 at Jordan Field, Memorial Park, Tauranga.

The World Homeless Day event will have a range of organisations from Tauranga’s homelessness provider network present, including Western Bay of Plenty Primary Health Organisation, Gate Pā and Welcome Bay community centres, Street Reach, Bay Financial Mentors, Community Centre, Community Health 4 Kids, Awhina House, Hanmer Clinic Tauranga, Problem Gambling Foundation, StreetHelp, 4Kings Barbers&Co, Rau O te Huia Community Trust and Tūmanako.

The Lions Club will provide free sausages and burgers at its barbecue trailer, while an enrolment stand would help people register to vote.

For Stace, the event is not about simply raising awareness for one day. “Community solutions are what’s needed,” she said.

“We can’t wait for someone to come in and tell us what to do or send us the golden tickets. We actually have to just try and look after our own backyard first and make a difference there.”

She believed building relationships was an important first step for people who’d experienced years of trauma and instability. “You can’t address that trauma without building the trust in the relationship in the beginning,” she said.

Stace hopes the October 10 event will encourage people to look beyond what they think they know about homelessness.

“If you look past what some people perceive is not a societal norm for them, then you actually find some really, really amazing humans,” she said.

The event is free and the public is invited to come along, meet the organisations working in the sector, learn about housing hardship and find out how they can help.

For more information, contact Te Paiaka at admin@tepaiaka.co.nz.