What I really want for Christmas: Ricky Houghton

PHOTO: Ricky Houghton says the Far North is in crisis and needs more support Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook

In the lead up to Christmas, RNZ is speaking to people who work to improve the lives of others, asking them what do they really want for Christmas? Not a phone, or a new car – but the things that would make a real difference to the people they support. In our second instalment, Michelle Cooke speaks to Ricky Houghton of He Korowai Trust.

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While many New Zealanders are wrapping up presents and planning Christmas dinners, many in the Far North are thinking about how they’ll be able to afford dinner tonight.

“Our community is in crisis,” Ricky Houghton says. “That is the truth of it.”

Houghton and his team at He Korowai Trust work with some of the poorest people in the country, providing a range of services from emergency and transitional housing to a trades training academy for youth, and restorative justice.

“There’s a lot of hurt, hate and harm up here… they just live in this nightmare they can’t wake up from,” he says.

“We’ve got a Covid pandemic at the moment, but you know up here in the Far North, we’ve got a social and economic pandemic.”

People have downsized their hopes, dreams and aspirations to what they get out of the hole in the wall, Houghton says. Poverty and hardship are all they have ever known. “It’s a lifestyle,” he says.

“But it takes its toll, you know, they just can’t function… They become dependent on the state I mean, really, for many of these families there’s only three accommodation options and that’s prison, hospital or a cemetery.”

People fear things won’t get better, so his team works closely with them to restore hope. But they can only do so much.

Services are overloaded, and while Houghton says everyone – even the government – is “doing their bit”, it’s not enough.

“I sit up here and I can’t escape it. I can’t ignore it. I trip over it everywhere I go,” he says.

“We need a hand. We need a hand up here.”

What does he want for his community? So much.

Many of the families he works with live in make-shift houses, tents, cowsheds and buses.