A child advocate isn't surprised by figures from south Auckland's Te Puea Marae showing children make up most of the homeless they're helping.
Of the 143 people currently staying there, 75 are children.
Child Poverty Action Group spokesperson Mike O'Brien says these figures show social services are inadequate and putting pressure on families.
"What we are increasingly seeing from a whole range of experiences and data from social services agencies is families who, for various reasons, can't get affordable or appropriate housing find themselves living in pretty unsatisfactory and awful circumstances," he says.
"Often wider families themselves have enormous financial and social pressures of their own so that despite the best will in the world, their own resources will only stretch so far anyway."
Te Puea Marae has completed 54 needs assessments since they opened their doors to the homeless over the past month, and he says more help is needed.
"There has to be a real shift [at a] policy and political level to really make a sustained and meaningful impact on poverty and poverty levels."
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