Latest news with #PriorityOne
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
'It's a different world.' Who strings the racquets at Cincinnati Open tennis tournament?
MASON, OH − During the qualifying rounds of the Cincinnati Open, one WTA player sent her racquets to the stringing room to be re-strung. Simple enough, right? The only problem? It was during her match. The other problem? The stringers did not have her type of string. Follow live: Cincinnati Open 4th round ATP, WTA results, schedule for Aug. 14 'It's always hot here.': As temperatures rise, players drop out of Cincinnati Open "We call it an 'on court.' It's of utmost urgency," Priority One founder and owner Nate Ferguson said. "She hadn't dropped off any string and didn't play with the most popular strings out there. It's chaos." Ferguson eventually got in touch with her coach, who instructed him to use a popular brand of string that was in stock. The stringers jumped into action, fast-tracking the process of cutting out the old strings, removing them, adding the new strings to the desired tension, straightening the strings and stenciling the racquet, all within a few minutes. Ferguson's company, Priority One, is a premium racquet service company that serves as the on-site racquet service provider for the Cincinnati Open. With the Cincinnati Open expanding into a two-week event this summer, Ferguson slightly overstaffed his stringing room to keep up demand. That includes Cincinnati native Drew Violette, of Next Level Stringing, who has strung for eight different area clubs. More: Watch Sinner, Alcaraz sneak up on fans at Cincinnati Open: 'It blew us all away' Violette outlined the difference between stringing at a local club vs. an ATP/WTA 1000 tournament. "A good service around the local area would be 24-48 hours to get a racquet done," Violette said. "This week, I've done well over 200 racquets. We have to manage our mornings and evenings very well." Stringers are tasked with completing up to 30 racquets per day, with the majority of volume early in the tournament before players are eliminated. More: Qualifier Terence Atmane upsets ATP No. 4 Taylor Fritz at Cincinnati Open All WTA and ATP players have a preference for their racquets. Professionals must precisely dial in how much power comes off the racquet with each swing. While the weight, balance, swing weight, grip size and length doesn't change, the difference comes in the string tensions, which varies based on altitude, temperature and court surface. A tight string equals control, a loose string equals power. Players travel with reels of their desired string, typically natural gut or polyester, to tournaments. Those reels are provided to Ferguson's team, who string the racquet to the players' desire. "There are a million ways to ruin a racquet by stringing them incorrectly. I'd argue it's the most important thing," Ferguson said. "It's a different level of pressure." More: Aryna Sabalenka has a new coach on board at Cincinnati Open 'I've been doing it ever since.' There's no exact numbers of racquets used by each player during a tournament. Ferguson stopped mid-interview to help Frances Tiafoe's coach, David Witt, who was dropping off his fifth and final racquet for his Aug. 13 match. Ben Shelton had 10 racquets available for his match the same day. It's all part of Priority One's Gold Service, which provides unlimited stringing for a flat fee. For Ferguson and Ron Yu, who began stringing in 1986, previous customers included Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and John Isner, among others. Ferguson graduated from SMU in 1986 and took a job stringing racquets shortly after. When he moved to Florida, Ferguson began stringing for an up-and-coming tennis star named Pete Sampras, who was particular about how his racquet was strung with 122-gauge gut strings. Sampras became the No. 1 player in the world and took Ferguson with him on tour, where Ferguson began to build relationships with fellow stringers, building the base of his future business. "I didn't want to get a job in real estate or computers. I knew a guy who did this," Ferguson explained. "I took a summer off and started stringing. I've been doing it ever since." 'It's a different world.' Plenty of people can string a tennis racquet. Not many can show up every day at a tournament at 7:30 a.m. and string until the final match of the day under the pressures from the top players in the world. "It's abusive. It's stressful. It's a different world," Ferguson said. It's a thankless job, but that's part of the business. Ferguson's team didn't have many demands, just air conditioning, which was happily met as part of the Cincinnati Open's $260 million facelift over the last year. Under the cool air and the bright lights, Ferguson's group, which he speculates could be one of the oldest stringing rooms out there, operates under pressure like a well-oiled machine, filled with hard work, stories and jokes. "We all work well together," Ferguson said. "If you get guys who work well together and are good stringers like I have, it can be fun. It's more like a family." This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Behind the scenes with the Cincinnati Open tennis racquet stringers
The Spinoff
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Spinoff
Why homelessness is worse under this government: a story in 10 graphs
There are more public houses, shorter housing waitlists and fewer people in emergency housing – so why are more people sleeping rough? When the government came into office, it announced a target to reduce the number of households living in emergency housing motels by 75% by 2030. It was a lofty, but important, goal. For any government, getting people out of emergency housing is not just a moral imperative, it's a financial one too. Emergency housing is the lowest rung of the public housing system, a last resort for people with nowhere else to go, while they wait to be placed into transitional housing or public housing. Conditions are often crowded and squalid, with no support systems. It's also really expensive. The government spent $336 million on emergency housing grants in 2023, an average of $273 per night per household, paid directly to motels and commercial accommodation providers. In January 2025, associate housing minister Tama Potaka announced the government had achieved its goal five years early. Between December 2023 and December 2024, the number of households in emergency housing motels fell from 3,141 to 591. Overall use of emergency housing has declined continuously since its peak in November 2021. In isolation, it should have been a massive victory. But the government has found itself dogged by claims that its policies have directly led to increased street homelessness. What really happened? A Ministry of Social Development report credited the fall in emergency housing numbers to 'operational changes' within the ministry and 'increased housing support services to help people out of emergency housing'. This includes the government's Priority One policy, which bumps families with dependent children to the top of the social housing waitlist if they have been in emergency housing for 12 weeks or more. The impact of this policy can be seen in the data. The number of people on the waitlist living in 'temporary accommodation' (emergency housing) has halved between March 2024 and March 2025. Since June 2023, 21,224 applicants have been housed from the social housing waitlist. The trend line shows a general monthly increase, with a particular spike in July 2024, when 1,298 people were placed into homes. New people continue to enter the waitlist every day, but the total size of the list has shrunk roughly a quarter between June 2023 and June 2025, from 24,716 to 19,115. This is mostly explained through an increase in public housing supply, as Kāinga Ora has completed some large-scale new builds. July 2024 set a recent monthly record, with 1,635 new homes coming online. The vast majority of these new homes were funded by the previous Labour government. A Cabinet paper released in February shows the current government does not intend to increase the overall stock of Kāinga Ora homes. National-led governments typically prefer to incentivise community housing providers (CHPs) to provide non-government state houses, rather than investing in Kāinga Ora houses. CHP housing has grown, with 1,677 new houses since June 2023, but still makes up only 16% of overall social housing. There's good news elsewhere, too: the number of individuals receiving Housing First services increased from 2,806 to 3,711 between June 2023 and June 2025. Housing First is generally considered the most effective programme for getting severely homeless people into stable tenancies. There are still 985 people on Housing First waitlists, 37.8% of whom have been homeless for three or more years. So there are more public houses, more people are being offered places in them, and more people are receiving homelessness services. That would usually correlate with lower levels of street homelessness. But that doesn't appear to be the case. The government doesn't have particularly good data on homelessness. The 2023 census found that 112,496 people were 'severely housing deprived' – but just 333 people were counted as 'roofless/rough sleepers'. Stats NZ admits this is almost certainly an undercount. People living at no fixed abode are inherently hard to track and are often suspicious of authority. The government's homelessness insights report for June 2025 said there was 'insufficient data to draw any conclusions' about whether overall homelessness had increased or decreased since 2023. But the report included data collected by charities working with homeless people across several New Zealand cities, which have tracked considerably higher numbers of rough sleepers, and this on-the-ground data is generally more thorough than high-level census data. In Auckland, six community providers found homelessness had risen 90% since September 2024, from 426 people living without shelter to 809. In Wellington, Downtown Community Ministry recorded a 25% increase in people rough sleeping in 2025 compared to 2024, from 114 to 141. Christchurch City Mission recorded 270 new clients in the six months to March 2025, up from 156 in the previous six months. The homelessness insights report suggested this could be the result of wider social and economic factors, including higher unemployment, rental inflation and higher rates of family violence and methamphetamine use. If that were the case, we'd expect to see other spikes in housing need over the past year. But we haven't. There hasn't been any discernible increase in the number of people entering the social housing waitlist – in fact, the number is slightly down since 2023, as the below graph shows. Possibly the best explanation for the increase in rough sleeping comes from the following graph, which shows a dramatic increase in the decline rate of emergency housing applications since 2024, from 4% to 32%. That's the result of a government policy called 'Tightening the gateway into emergency housing', which came into effect in August 2024. It's a set of new rules that make it harder for people to get into emergency housing and harder to stay. Emergency housing is available to anyone who does not have adequate accommodation and who comes under income and savings limits. It's initially granted for seven days but can be extended indefinitely. There are certain obligations on people in emergency housing: they must contribute 25% of their income towards housing costs, engage with support services, and make active efforts to find somewhere else to stay. However, under the old rules, the Ministry of Social Development would not decline emergency housing grants if it would 'cause serious hardship' or 'increase or create any risk to the life or welfare of the applicant or the applicant's immediate family'. Emergency housing is a last resort for people who generally have nowhere else to go, so declines were extremely rare. Under the new rules, that is no longer the case. According to the homelessness insights report, since the new policy was put in place, emergency housing applicants have been rejected for reasons including: 'The need can be met another way' (34.3%), 'Circumstances could have been reasonably foreseen' (22.5% – this includes where a person is determined to have contributed to their own homelessness), 'not eligible' (16.7%) and 'not an emergency situation' (14.7%). Modelling provided to ministers by the Ministry of Social Development ahead of the changes estimated that 1,000 fewer households would be able to access emergency housing, which would save the government $350 million over five years. This net saving was reapportioned by the government for Budget 2024. The Salvation Army's State of the Nation report said the changes to emergency housing eligibility were 'a key contributor to rising street homelessness and housing insecurity'. It's difficult to say exactly how many of the people whose emergency housing applications were declined ended up living on the street, because the government doesn't have a good record of them. While most people who leave emergency housing enter transitional housing or social housing, 14% were unknown to the government, according to the homelessness insights report. And that's only people who were accepted into emergency housing in the first place – it doesn't include those who were denied up front. (Access to this data is improving – at its peak under the previous government, up to 50% of emergency housing exits were untracked.) In their analysis of the policy, Ministry of Social Development officials warned ministers Louise Upston, Chris Bishop and Tama Potaka that 'the proposed changes are likely to increase the risk of homelessness, rough sleeping, people living in cars, overcrowding, and could increase the number of people living in unsafe situations'. Similar warnings are repeated multiple times through MSD's report: 'without sufficient housing supply, more people may end up homeless as a result of tightening the [emergency housing] gateway. Costs and risks associated with homelessness are likely to accrue over time, especially in the longer term.' Officials highlighted that the changes were 'likely to disproportionately impact population groups over represented in [emergency housing], including low-income single people, sole parents and their children, Māori and Pacific peoples. It will also not account for those with complex needs who may find it hard to meet responsibilities ( e.g. people in a heightened state of stress, and/or those with poor mental health and/or addiction issues).' The report also warned that the changes could breach the Crown's obligations to Māori under article 3 of te Tiriti o Waitangi and to children under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. When questioned by Jack Tame on Q + A earlier this month, Chris Bishop denied assertions that the policy had kicked more people onto the street, but said he was seeking 'urgent advice' on the issue. The biggest question is whether these changes were necessary at all. The number of people in emergency housing was already on a rapid downward trend and had been for three years. Increased public housing supply, combined with the Priority One policy, successfully gets more people into stable homes and reduces the financial burdens of emergency housing. The government likely would have hit its 75% reduction target ahead of schedule, even without making it harder for people to access emergency housing – and would have done so without such a severe human cost.
Scoop
18-07-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Canvas Tauranga Careers Expo Returns This August
Press Release – Priority one Exhibitors across technology, infrastructure, innovation and sustainability will be showcasing what its like to work in specific industries today and opportunities for the future. A dynamic, hands-on experience for students deciding on their future returns in August at Mercury Baypark Arena with over 60 exhibitors, from tertiary and training providers to key business representatives in attendance at the Canvas Tauranga Careers Expo. Hosted by Priority One and The Rotary Club of Tauranga annually, the event is designed to help shift the dial from I don't know to 'I do know',' explains Rotary Club of Tauranga Organiser, Sue Boyne. 'There are so many career and training pathways for students to consider, and it can be overwhelming. By having all the exhibitors in one arena for two days we can empower students and parents to explore diverse career pathways and get some real clarity on what they want to do with their future.' A unique aspect of the expo is the inclusion of key business representatives from across the region. Priority One's Instep Manager, Michelle Clarke says 'Connecting directly with businesses helps you understand what the work involves, what skills are valued and whether it's the right fit for you. It's a practical way to explore career options.' Exhibitors across technology, infrastructure, innovation and sustainability will be showcasing what it's like to work in specific industries today and opportunities for the future. This year's Construction Hub showcases the many roles that make up the construction sector. 'From hands-on trades to design, planning and project management, it's a chance to see where your skills could fit,' explains Michelle. 'With Tauranga continuing to grow, these careers will be needed more than ever.' Canvas 2025 offers an inclusive environment to engage with employers, tertiary providers, industry professionals, and trainers. 'Students and adults seeking a career change can get real-world insights, seek guidance across a wide range of sectors and make valuable connections.' Says Sue Boyne. Mechanical Engineering student, Seb Lemberg, says the expo was pivotal in helping him choose his career pathway. 'I attended in my last year of school, and the expo was hugely valuable to me. The conversations I had helped me solidify my decision to study engineering, and it also gave me invaluable industry connections that ultimately helped me secure required summer internship work at local engineering firms.' Exhibitors this year also include businesses and industries from a range of sectors including engineering, law, science, finance, media, logistics, Māori business, the horticulture sector, health and beauty, tourism, fishing and infrastructure sectors. Universities and vocational training providers from across New Zealand, will also be exhibiting. 'The expo runs both Thursday August 7th and Friday August 8th,' 'There are sessions both days between 9am and 2pm for students to attend and a 4-8pm session on the Thursday evening, which is a great opportunity for students to attend with their parents and whānau.' Says Sue.
Scoop
18-07-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Canvas Tauranga Careers Expo Returns This August
A dynamic, hands-on experience for students deciding on their future returns in August at Mercury Baypark Arena with over 60 exhibitors, from tertiary and training providers to key business representatives in attendance at the Canvas Tauranga Careers Expo. Hosted by Priority One and The Rotary Club of Tauranga annually, the event is designed to help shift the dial from I don't know to 'I do know',' explains Rotary Club of Tauranga Organiser, Sue Boyne. 'There are so many career and training pathways for students to consider, and it can be overwhelming. By having all the exhibitors in one arena for two days we can empower students and parents to explore diverse career pathways and get some real clarity on what they want to do with their future.' A unique aspect of the expo is the inclusion of key business representatives from across the region. Priority One's Instep Manager, Michelle Clarke says 'Connecting directly with businesses helps you understand what the work involves, what skills are valued and whether it's the right fit for you. It's a practical way to explore career options.' Exhibitors across technology, infrastructure, innovation and sustainability will be showcasing what it's like to work in specific industries today and opportunities for the future. This year's Construction Hub showcases the many roles that make up the construction sector. 'From hands-on trades to design, planning and project management, it's a chance to see where your skills could fit,' explains Michelle. 'With Tauranga continuing to grow, these careers will be needed more than ever.' Canvas 2025 offers an inclusive environment to engage with employers, tertiary providers, industry professionals, and trainers. 'Students and adults seeking a career change can get real-world insights, seek guidance across a wide range of sectors and make valuable connections.' Says Sue Boyne. Mechanical Engineering student, Seb Lemberg, says the expo was pivotal in helping him choose his career pathway. 'I attended in my last year of school, and the expo was hugely valuable to me. The conversations I had helped me solidify my decision to study engineering, and it also gave me invaluable industry connections that ultimately helped me secure required summer internship work at local engineering firms.' Exhibitors this year also include businesses and industries from a range of sectors including engineering, law, science, finance, media, logistics, Māori business, the horticulture sector, health and beauty, tourism, fishing and infrastructure sectors. Universities and vocational training providers from across New Zealand, will also be exhibiting. 'The expo runs both Thursday August 7th and Friday August 8th,' 'There are sessions both days between 9am and 2pm for students to attend and a 4-8pm session on the Thursday evening, which is a great opportunity for students to attend with their parents and whānau.' Says Sue. The Canvas Careers Expo is free to attend. For more information go to
Scoop
16-06-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Priority One: Twelve Months In, 2100 Children Housed
Hon Chris Bishop Minister of Housing Associate Minister of Housing In the first twelve months of the Government's flagship Priority One policy, nearly 1000 families with more than 2,124 children have been moved from dank emergency housing motel rooms to secure, stable homes. 'The largescale use of emergency housing was one of the biggest public policy failures in New Zealand history. Under the previous government's watch, thousands of children were consigned to grow up in cramped, dingy motel rooms at a cost to taxpayers of $1 million every day at its peak,' Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. 'The cost to taxpayers was a scandal, but the social cost for families trying to raise their kids from a motel room for months or even years on end was an absolute tragedy. 'We campaigned on introducing a Priority One category to help these kids and their families move into social homes, and getting it up and running was a key priority for us as an incoming Government. 'Priority One, which has now been in place for a year, bumps families with dependent children to the very top of the social housing waitlist if they have been in emergency housing for 12 weeks or more. 'Thanks to Priority One and the hard work of many frontline staff across multiple government agencies, thousands of children now live in a warm, dry social home instead of a crowded motel room.' Minister Potaka said the Government had already achieved its target of reducing the number of households in Emergency Housing by 75 per cent by 2030 and now needed to maintain progress. Since November 2023 to April 2025, households in emergency housing have dropped from 3,342 to 516– that's a drop of 84.5 percent. 'And importantly, there are now significantly fewer children in emergency housing. In April 2024, there were 3,339 children in emergency housing, and a year later we're down to 519. 'The focus on supporting whānau with tamariki into better stable homes could mean a world of difference for their health, school attendance, and regular employment. 'One of the whānau we're talking about today is a family of six whose eldest child has serious health concerns needing specialist care, but who had been struggling while stuck living in emergency accommodation for six months. 'Our Priority One focus helped get this whānau into a stable Kāinga Ora home and helped enable them to get the wider support they needed. 'We will continue to improve the housing system because there are thousands of deserving people out there just like this whānau, many of them on the social housing list just waiting to take proper care and enjoy a better home. 'MSD has also improved how it tracks emergency housing outcomes. We now know where around 85 percent of those leaving emergency housing go - be it social housing, transitional housing, or a private rental. 'Of the households that exited emergency housing (excluding contracted emergency housing) during December 2024: 37 percent left emergency housing to go into social housing (4 percent through CHPs, 33 percent through Kāinga Ora) 29 percent had moved into transitional housing 19 percent were receiving the accommodation supplement for a private rental 14 percent did not access any of this housing-related assistance.'
