John MacDonald: A red zone home base for the homeless?

Author: John MacDonald,
Publish Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2026, 12:32pm

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How would you feel about an area of Christchurch’s Red Zone being made permanently available for homeless people?

There’d be positives and negatives, for sure.

And yes, it would probably put some people off going into the area. But, when you weigh everything up, would it really be such a bad idea?

The thing is, homeless people are living there right now. But not for much longer, if the city council gets its way.

There’s up to 60 people living in the Wetlands Grove area in Bexley in cars, trucks, buses, tents and shacks. And they’ve been saying over the weekend that there’s a sense of community there and they’ve got nowhere else to go.

However, they’ve been told they have to pack up and leave by the end of February. Because the city council wants to start work on landscaping and flood protection work in the Bexley area.

Which is all part of the master plan developed for the Red Zone which stretches from the city out to the coast.

There are bike tracks and walking paths planned. But also a big wetlands area to help with flood protection and filter the water before it ends up in the Ōtākaro/Avon River.

It’s a plan that’s going to take decades to put in place. But the council wants to crack on with some of the work next year. So it needs the homeless campers to up sticks by February.

The land’s been sitting empty since after the quakes. But it seems it was only two years ago when people really started congregating in the area and calling it home.

A woman by the name of Fire, who is 65, is saying that she moved in about a year and a half ago after feeling lonely and unsafe in some sort of transitional housing she’d been in. So she joined the crew in the Red Zone.

Another one of the people living in the Red Zone, Moko, says there are all sorts of people living there. Some of them have jobs.

He says they’ve got toilets and showers and a security team. They’re people who care about each other because they understand the living arrangement and have regular dinners together.

And, when you think about it, these people want the same thing we all want.

They say they’ve got their own rules to keep things under control. But they also say the most important thing for them is staying together and maintaining their sense of belonging.

Who doesn’t want that?

What’s more, it’s very easy for those of us not living rough to tell these people to get their act together and find somewhere decent to live. It’s also very difficult to understand why some people even choose to live this way.

But they do.

Which is why I think that, at the very least, the city council should look into a better solution than just telling these people they have to be gone by the end of February.

Because, when it comes down to it, would it really be such a bad idea to let them have somewhere else in the Red Zone to stay? I don’t think it would.

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