Households in emergency housing in New Zealand

Household composition is based on the declared adults and children staying in Emergency Housing at the end of the month and may not be reflective of their actual family size.
Details of the individual children attached to each EH SNG are not recorded and as such MSD are unable to count the number of unique children in emergency housing across a period if their caregivers have had more than one grant in the period.

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.