Local Focus: Inside Hawke’s Bay emergency housing and the motel generation

What’s it like to live in a motel for years?

What’s it like to raise kids in a motel, where you don’t feel safe about them playing outside? Where all you have is a small kitchenette and a bedroom?

If you’re driving around Hastings or Napier, you’ll see plenty of motels where that is how people are living. The “No Vacancy” signs don’t mean they are hosting tourists.

This is the “motel generation”.

Six years ago, Stanzie and Peni Aso moved from Samoa to Hawke’s Bay to find the New Zealand dream, but ended up living in a motel.

“We were in a rental house at Mahora,” said Stanzie. “But the landlord sold that house, so that’s why we’re in a transitional house now.”

Last November the couple, with their 3-year-old daughter, had to move out of the rental house. Now they live in a one-bedroom unit at Magpie Motel in Hastings.

Last November, Stanzie Aso and her family moved into Magpie Motel in Hastings.

There’s no stove, only an electric element to cook on, and the dining table is also the bench where they prepare food.

A queen-sized bed is placed in the living room, because Peni’s work usually won’t finish until midnight.

His evening shift is better-paid, but means less time with his young daughter.

“Every night I’m going to finish work, my daughter has already fallen asleep,” he said.

In order not to disturb his daughter’s sleep, he usually sleeps in the living room.

Peni works at the Silver Fern Farms Pacific factory six days a week and earns $950 weekly, but he still can’t afford a private rental home in Hastings.

The family pay below-market rent - $226 per week for the transitional housing rent, including bills.

“Living in a hotel and a rental house is different,” Stanzie said. “We have a small space in the motel; not enough space for my kid.”

Stanzie feels sorry for her daughter, as the little girl is growing up as part of the motel generation.

Her daughter is on the waiting list at a local kindergarten. She plans to start working herself once her daughter is in daycare.

“I’ll go to the pack house. That’s where I worked last year. I just want to work to help my husband.”

Stanzie’s Kiwi dream is to become a homeowner. She would love a house with a backyard for her daughter to play in. But the waitlist for public housing is long.

“We are now at A14. It’s a low rate, and [it] will take a long time for us to look for a suitable house - it may take as long as four to five years.”

Figures from December 2022 show there are 669 applicants registered on the waitlist for public housing in Hastings, and there are 708 in Napier.

With 50 rooms, Napier's Bluewater Hotel is one of the region's biggest emergency and transitional housing providers.

Another family from Napier has been on the waiting list since July 2020.

“This is my third year on the waiting list, and I just feel like I’m going nowhere.”

This single mum, who wants to remain anonymous, lives with her three children in Napier’s Bluewater Hotel.

“The last time I spoke to them, I was a priority, but here we are today.”

Before moving here, she separated from her partner and lived at her sister’s four-bedroom house. But both sisters have three children.

“The whole live situation was just so crowded.”

So in October last year, they left and lived in a car by the beach, before moving into emergency housing.

“Be here or be homeless?” the mother said.

“But it’s getting kind of hard for my children. They are actually stuck in this room 24/7, apart from when they go to school.”

It’s not the home this mum had hoped for for her kids. There’s no backyard or playground in the hotel, and no family visitors are allowed.

“I can’t have my visitors, [or have] my sister or someone come help me with my kids. So I’ve got to do everything by myself.”

The eldest girl is 10, another is seven, and the youngest is just a year old and is starting to explore the apartment.

“My baby knows how to climb up the stairs. I was cooking dinner and I heard ‘bang’, and it was her falling down the stairs, [which left her] with a bruise on her forehead.”

Because it’s a motel, there’s no option to install a gate at the bottom of the stairs. There’s also potential danger outside in the carpark.

“A lot of people come and go. You don’t know if they stay in the motel or not. You just get random cars and random people here. That’s why I don’t allow my children to go outside.”

Ministry of Social Development data shows that 336 people were living in emergency housing in Napier at the end of last year , including 156 children. Of the 111 living in emergency accommodation in Hastings, 45 were children.

When it comes to transitional housing, there were 210 places in Hastings, and 250 in Napier at the end of 2022.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development would not answer questions on camera, but said in a statement: “We provide warm, dry and safe short-term accommodation for people in need, along with tailored housing-related support.”

With Cyclone Gabrielle destroying hundreds of houses across Hawke’s Bay, housing availability in the region is unlikely to quickly improve.

Public Interest Journalism Fund