Housing demolition begins

Napier MP Stuart Nash

Controversial plans to reshape a Napier state housing suburb stepped up another notch yesterday with the start of a demolition project which will see 33 buildings knocked over in the next few months.

The work started with fencing off a block of four units earmarked for demolition in Longfellow Ave, on the eastern side the Maraenui shopping centre.

Over the next few months, 33 of the blocks, comprising 96 units, will be removed as part of a plan to get rid of the buildings which have symbolised housing in the suburb and its community over more than half-a-century since they were built in the housing boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

At least six other two-storey blocks have been removed from properties in the area over the last three years, including both Bledisloe Rd corners of Darwin Cr, opposite the western side of the shopping centre, both Longfellow Ave corners of Percy Spiller Cr, in Masefield Ave, and late last year in Roberts Tce, in neighbouring Onekawa.

The units have in many cases been empty more than two years, raising the anger of community and housing lobby groups who have asked why Housing New Zealand has not been letting the units when it has high-priority families waiting for homes.

While Housing NZ says the houses set for the chop are earthquake risks and no longer suitable, former units resident Minnie Ratima said the units had been "deliberately run-down" by Housing New Zealand and "trashed" since becoming unoccupied to the point where "everyone" wants them gone.

"It is hurtful to see them like that," she said yesterday while taking time-out on a five-day Te Araroa Offers Hope walk in the Far North.

"We grew-up in those houses," she said.

"People don't want them to rot away, but they know now there is nothing they can do about it. All of the people I've spoken to lately want them gone."

Napier City councillor Maxine Boag, whose Nelson Park Ward includes the area, said: "People are sick and tired of having this rundown derelict housing. They look awful, all boarded-up.

"Some people are concerned that there won't be state housing replacing it, but people are hopeful there will be a positive development," she said.

Opposition Napier MP Stuart Nash said he now had "qualified support" for what he had been told was a project in which the Government is using Maraenui as a trial, where already a seven-house development has replaced demolished units in Longfellow Ave, and where local social services group Roopu A Iwi has recently signed an agreement with Housing NZ and the Napier City Council for joint involvement in developing the area.

He now supports the removal of the buildings, but says he wants to ensure that properties Housing New Zealand says it will sell during the process "will only be sold to people who are going to live on them".

"If they [Housing NZ] are going to sell to investors who will just become landlords charging market rents then that's when we will be coming after them," he said.