Rough sleepers are leaving Auckland's central city for surrounding suburbs because of concerns about the government's proposed move-on order legislation, according to Lifewise, an Auckland social service that works with children, older people and those sleeping rough.

Lifewise chief executive Pam Elgar said the shift is already happening before the Summary Offences (Move-on Orders) Amendment Bill has passed through Parliament. The bill is currently before the Justice Select Committee, which has heard submissions from a group mostly opposed to the measure.

The bill would give police new powers to issue move-on orders directing a person to leave a specified public area. The government says this targets low-level disorderly behaviour to prevent it from escalating. The select committee document lists begging and rough sleeping explicitly as forms of disorderly or disruptive behaviour — alongside things like unreasonably blocking entry to a shop or breaching the peace.

During House debate on 21 May 2026, New Zealand Police itself opposed criminalising rough sleeping. Select committee submitters went further, describing the orders as "morally indefensible," "unnecessary" and a breach of the Bill of Rights.

Auckland Council's latest street count found 706 people sleeping in cars, on streets and in parks in January — up from 653 a year earlier but down from a peak of 940 in September 2025. Elgar cautioned that these figures are limited. The count is done by council officers covering only a small part of the city and doesn't capture the full picture of homelessness. She noted that numbers coming through Lifewise's Merge service and the Auckland City Mission are actually rising, which suggests the official count may not be telling the whole story.

Lifewise outreach worker Kat Feo said clients are arriving in Auckland from Wellington, Christchurch, Rotorua and Hamilton. The team of six outreach workers now shares a single car to cover the expanded area. One client, Victoria Crawford, came to Auckland from Wellington in 2024 to enter rehabilitation after serving a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence. She was released without any accommodation arranged.

Public health experts have raised concerns that the new powers could catch vulnerable young people who aren't necessarily homeless. The bill applies to disorderly behaviour "anywhere in public" rather than being limited to specific problem areas. Earlier reports also flagged that at-risk youth could be swept up under these wider powers.

The government has paired the enforcement bill with additional spending. In June it announced a further $14.5 million in support for rough sleepers, and reported that 674 households who had been sleeping rough have moved into stable housing since September 2025. This follows a September 2025 announcement of five immediate actions intended to expand support and pathways into social housing.

The question at the heart of the select committee's task is whether these two approaches work together or against each other. Police and submitters have questioned whether the enforcement tool makes sense even as government figures point to progress on the housing side. The reports of people already moving to suburbs before the law takes effect suggest this tension may become clearer as the bill moves forward through Parliament — particularly once select committee members weigh the on-the-ground displacement against their own experiences with move-on orders, which have already been used informally in inner Auckland.