A south Auckland marae that last year provided shelter to homeless people is preparing to do it all over again.

Te Puea Memorial Marae in Mangere Bridge began offering emergency accommodation to people in need in May 2016.

Its Manaaki Tangata programme gave them access to food, shelter, and support to get into appropriate long-term housing.

Chris Harrowell Hurimoana Dennis says the marae got 130 of the 180 families it helped last year into housing.

When the initiative stopped at the end of July 2016, the marae had helped 180 families and placed 130 of them in homes.

Marae chairman Hurimoana Dennis says others were referred to support services to get the help they needed.

"I was surprised at how many mums, dads and kids we had," he says.

"We had 104 children and 77 parents. It was the kids who kept us focused.

"The youngest one we helped was four days old."

Dennis, who's also a senior police officer, says the marae is now working toward repeating its efforts from last year.

"We've just got some things to work through with various agencies and we think we can do more to help.

"We're doing renovations at the marae.

"We hope sooner rather than later we can push the button and start doing some work."

Staff and volunteers at the marae learned a lot while running the Manaaki Tangata programme, Dennis says.

They also developed a pool of businesses, organisations and agencies that provided valuable support last year and which remain committed.

"Countdown Mangere gave us a lot of food and Turuki Healthcare provided a lot of medical services for the [homeless] whanau," Dennis says.

Valuable donations were also made by The Warehouse as well as individual members of the community.

Almost $100,000 was contributed to the cause via a Givealittle online fundraising page.

Work done by the marae last year helped to raise the profile of homelessness as a political issue, Dennis says.

"There's a lot more awareness now.

"The [Government] agencies still need to show a lot more empathy, patience, and sincerity when they engage with whanau (families).

"I get the sense there's a lot more urgency on the issue. It's certainly got the profile."

Dennis says becoming aware of and working with such a large number of homeless families and children had an emotional impact on him.

"I've seen a lot of things in my years in the police and I thought I was quite grassroots, but it blew me away that there were so many kids who were so vulnerable."