PHOTO: Salvation Army Report
Existing problems such as a lack of affordable housing and unemployment have been magnified by the COVID-19 crisis, a new report has found.
And these are manifesting in an increased need for mental health support, the Salvation Army’s latest State of Our Communities report found.
The charity has produced the annual report since 2017, each year focusing on three different locales – this time it was Rotorua, Johnsonville and Queenstown – Rotorua chosen for having a significant Māori population, Johnsonville for being “small and diverse” and Queenstown as a “tourism mecca with a large migrant worker population”.
Disease modellers have singled out Māori as being particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, with poverty and overcrowding likely to exacerbate the risks of the disease. Queenstown has also struggled, with tourism hit by the border closure and Auckland’s return to alert level 3 in August.
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