Recipients of Emergency Housing Special Needs Grants in New Zealand

Ethnicity is about people's identity and sense of belonging. Ethnicity measures cultural affiliation, rather than race, ancestry, nationality, or citizenship. Ethnicity is self-perceived and people can identify with more than one ethnic group.

The total response ethnicity percentages are calculated by dividing the number of people who identify with each ethnic group by the total unique number of people with a reported ethnicity. (this excludes people who have not specified an ethnicity). Total response ethnicity means people can appear more than once in MSD reporting, so ethnic group totals will add to more than 100 percent.

Emergency Housing assistance payments are granted as Special Needs Grants (EH SNG).
Emergency housing is for people who have nowhere to stay in the next seven nights, and have no other adequate housing options. Most accommodation options are motels or hostels. For those who have been in emergency housing for more than seven nights, MSD requires a payment of 25% of the income towards accommodation costs.

MSD started applies a range of confidentiality procedures to public data releases, therefore some smaller values are not shown.

The total amount granted for an EH SNG may not be the same as the amount spent.
A client can have more than one grant in the time period.

One registered supplier may provide accommodation across multiple premises. These premises may be in different locations or operating trading names but are receiving payment through the single supplier record. MSD Region is based on the Work and Income region where the recommending case manager for the application was based at the time of the grant. This may differ to the clients residential address or the location of the EH supplier.

At URL provided, download 'Emergency Housing Grants - TLA - March 2026 (Excel 21.76KB)' file.

The dataset provides a breakdown of households in emergency housing at the end of the quarter.