Service providers, including kaupapa Māori providers, highlighted that gang membership or connections are not necessarily an insurmountable issue. We heard that when providers recognised gang connections and only housed members or associates of one gang in a housing complex, this vastly reduced the issues seen in other complexes where multiple gang connections were present. Kaupapa Māori providers emphasised the importance of dealing with these issues up-front and face to face. “They’ve not had issues with gang members and so on. Because they sat down and talked with them. They worked it out.” [Advocate and service provider] Providers also shared frustrations in the way motels can pick and choose who they will offer emergency accommodation to, observing that many moteliers would simply refuse to deal with those who had mental health issues, were pregnant, young, or otherwise needed support. Availability and consistency of wraparound support services As we noted above, many clients in the emergency housing system have complex social issues that require active understanding and support to resolve. We heard repeated concern that providers, particularly private moteliers, are not equipped to deal with these kinds of issues. “A motelier is not adequate to meet the complex needs of those being housed.” [Former transitional housing provider] Some people told us they had not heard from their MSD case manager for months, let alone any other social services. Providers acknowledged the difficulty of delivering meaningful support in line with their service agreements. 28 Human Rights Commission “You’re supposed to go and meet with your client and ask them have they looked for houses that week, and you just get told to leave them alone. Which is fair enough – how do you support clients when you and they both know the answer is, there are no houses?” [Housing/benefit advocate] Some people pointed out that even if someone did not need social services or wraparound support at the beginning of their stay (because they were experiencing straight-forward housing need), the continual stress and pressure of not being able to find long-term housing created a new need for support such as counselling. They expressed frustration that the system was creating new problems instead of solving the ones people came in with. Even in transitional housing, which does involve the component of wraparound support, we heard that this support can vary significantly between providers. Some providers expressed concerns and frustration at unenforced sector standards and no evaluation of services. “Are the new providers just running it like a motel? Because we regularly get people who’ve been at a different provider for 3-4 years and not seeing their case workers for months.” [Transitional housing provider with significant background in social services] This frustration was compounded by the individual contract funding approach taken by HUD. Providers told us that getting adequate funding to deliver the services needed to support families into sustainable long-term outcomes “depends how much you can fight for”. Even then, they reported that HUD is only willing to fund the absolute basics. This insufficient funding also causes stress for services and employees who wind up operating on shoestring budgets and beyond their paid hours. We heard repeatedly