It’s not an uncommon story. The machinery of emergency housing held 622 Wellington households in its gears at last count. The people in those households are signed on to short-term contracts with emergency housing providers, funded through grants provided by the Ministry of Social Development, one week at a time. But those contracts aren’t protected by the Residential Tenancies Act, giving people in emergency housing a shaky claim on the title “tenant”, and no certainty of shelter beyond seven days. On the other hand, the contracts sometimes roll over indefinitely – in some cases for years – because the actual social housing wait list now exceeds 22,000 people.