Lockdown in Waitakere 2021

The 2021 lockdowns in Tāmaki Makaurau highlighted both the acute and chronic hardship
experienced by many people in West Auckland. Low wages and low benefit rates plus expensive and
often low quality housing meant that people had limited financial resources to fall back on in a crisis.

On 17 August 2021, New Zealand went into Alert Level 4 in response to the detection of a case of
COVID-19 in the community. Auckland remained at Alert Level 4 for six weeks until 21 September
2021 before moving to Alert Level 3. During this time, New Zealand moved from an elimination to a
suppression strategy as the Delta variant spread across Tāmaki Makaurau.

This report describes the impacts of the Alert Level restrictions (lockdowns) on Visionwest service
delivery, for both whānau who access Visionwest services and the wider West Auckland community.
The emerging priorities for Visionwest are also identified.