Heidi Caccipoli and partner Sean in Marewa where Kāinga Ora is planning a 14 home development. Photo / Warren Buckland
When it was reported in late 2012 that there was a “housing emergency” in Hawke’s Bay, the light shone quickly on Napier, a city where homelessness on the streets had been almost non-existent, or well hidden.
In a short space of time, there had become a culture of couch-surfing and living in garages, cars, caravans, tents and even just under the cover of trees in public parks or down by the beach, not just single people, but right up to whole families.
New Zealand was undergoing its biggest changes in the history of “state housing”, which was being reframed politically as “social housing”, with the early signs of demolition and removal of 50- to 60-year-old homes and replacement.
Those who could afford it – even barely - started living in motels, and the government of the time by late 2015 moved to funding such emergency accommodation. By August 2017, a month or so before the change of government, it was revealing it had (over time) bought six motels and was leasing at least a dozen more, and that it had spent $350 million on emergency housing, creating 8600 places.
Ultimately, more than 100 homes in the Maraenui area and neighbouring parts of Onekawa and Marewa, would go, bringing a provincial focus to what was going on in Auckland suburb Glen Innes and Pomare, between Lower and Upper Hutt.
The term “Housing Register” became common reference for numbers waiting for homes, which at peak would exceed 800 in Napier alone, and which was at 687 at the end of June this year, according to Ministry of Social Development figures released on Friday afternoon.
New “builds” are proliferating, with modern Government housing iteration Kāinga Ora Homes and Communities saying May it had provided 60 extra new homes in Napier since July 2021, with 157 in-progress, including 24 now close to full population in a single complex off Seddon Cres, Marewa, adjacent to the Chambers St Reserve and opposite Napier Boys’ High School.
More than 70 homes were in progress to be built in the Onekawa area, involving significant redevelopment in residential streets near Maraenui Park, including 21 homes over two sites in Cottrell Cres, 15 in Venables Ave and McLaren Cres, and 13 in Venables and Cornford Avenues and Cottrell Cres, and 10 in Hitchings Ave.
Also signalled for redevelopment are the sites of 60-year-old multi-storeyed flats complexes now set for demolition in Carnell St, Napier.
While much of it makes use of land vacant since the demolitions and removals, some developments are going ahead despite resident concerns, particularly around proposals for Neeve Place/White St in Taradale and Bedford Rd/Lowry Tce in Marewa, each with 10 or more homes on sections where there had been just three.
And then there’s Wellesley Rd, with one development plan comprising 12 two-bedroom houses with no off-street parking, on a section where the demolition of its single, aged house, used in recent years as legal chambers, was the first sign for neighbours of the city-living arrangement emerging – where people of the future don’t own cars and walk, or scooter, to daily activities such as work, shopping and appointments.
Also on Wellesley Rd is another private development, also with little allowance for off-street parking, and a site cleared and plans passed through the resource consent process with the Napier City Council on a “non-notified” basis but it’s understood there has been a delay with building consent.
The developments come amid the continued demands for residential land in Napier, with apparent holds on a site off Prebensen Drive which the Napier City Council had hoped to sell to Kāinga Ora, and on an iwi proposal for about 600 homes on former market-gardening land off Riverbend Rd and beside Maraenui Park and Pukemokimoki Marae.
A Kāinga Ora spokesperson said that while the council had offered the Prebensen Drive site, it has no current interest. The sale proposal was caught up in a residents’ application to the High Court for judicial review of council decisions, and it was scheduled to come before the court again next week.
Plans for the Riverbend Rd site are being made with Ngati Kahungunu Iwi chairman Bayden Barber hopeful resource consent applications can be made in the near future, although it’s too early to say whether physical work could start within the next year.
Kāinga Ora regional director Naomi Whitewood said that with the “urgent need” for homes in Napier, the agency is working on ensuring its plans “align with, and are supported by our key partners including mana whenua and Napier City Council”.
The projects on a map provided to Hawke’s Bay Today are redevelopments where it has properties “next to each other with much older public homes on large sections”.
“It is not feasible to bring these homes up to healthy homes standards,” she said. “We look at removing the homes and building more warm, dry and modern homes on the site.”
Council staff say the council must follow the tests in the Resource Management Act to decide whether a resource consent application should be notified, and it “must, or may, disregard certain effects on the community”, including those on people who own or occupy adjacent land.
Only certain people identified by the council as being adversely affected by a particular proposal can submit on a ‘limited notified’ resource consent.
They say the Government’s National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (NPSUD) changed how councils manage housing density and car parking, requiring all councils to remove minimum car parking rules from their district plans by February 20 last year, except for accessible, or mobility, car parking.
It says that, as set out in its Housing Development Capacity Assessment 2021, based on a medium-high population projection, an additional 2700 houses will be needed to meet demand in Napier by 2030.
The council also developed the Napier Spatial Picture, with options for Napier’s housing and commercial/industrial growth, and they may be accommodated in the District Plan - resulting in a new focus on medium-density residential intensification (terraced houses or walk-up apartments) around city centres and main roads.
A Proposed District Plan will be released for public consultation later this year.
As a residential area, Marewa, stretching across Napier from Whitmore Park to the fire station, is a representation of Napier’s urban growth following the 1931 Hawke’s Bay Earthquake.
Previously low-lying swamp land was raised and development of the new suburb began just three years later, eventually creating what almost 90 years later is a well-treed zone the real estate agents might call “leafy”, and it includes Kennedy Park, one of New Zealand’s most-popular family holiday destinations.
But in Lowry Tce, Heidi Caccipoli and her partner, resident in the street for 14 years, wonder if the character is about to start changing, with Kāinga Ora in the process of applying to the Napier City Council for consents to build 14 two or three bedroom homes in a double-storey, duplex apartments arrangement replacing four single-level family homes.
The dirty words are “high-density”, being that in 2023 it generally brings little to no requirement for off-street parking, thus congested parking at the kerbsides, and increased dangers for children, given that there’s a pre-school centre – long-established kohanga reo Keita Ahenata Puriri, with about 18 pupils and associated traffic.
But Caccipoli says Kāinga Ora (or Housing Corp as it was) has not always been the best of landlords, and if not managed properly the higher density of the homes will lead to both infrastructure issues (with current sewerage systems struggling to cope) and social issues.
She says the first anyone in the street became aware of anything happening was when surveyors were seen at work, but inquiries to Kāinga Ora and the council yielded little information until a meeting on July 13, leaving little opportunity for the community to have any input, as opposed to being told what was happening.
“We only found out via a third party, so we were slightly hoodwinked,” she says.
She remains unimpressed, alleging “underhand” practices at Kāinga Ora and the council in keeping information from the people until it’s just about too late.
She takes some solace from the fact that a project in Hastings has been put on the backburner with noises made by the local community.
It was proposed that 10 homes, including four two-storey buildings, on two residential sections in Ada St, Parkvale, but the opposition led to withdrawal of an application for resource consent.
A Kāinga Ora spokesperson said the plan for Lowry Tce and Bedford Rd is for a mix of two and three-bedroom double-storey duplex or terrace-style housing.
Caccipoli says she appreciates Kāinga Ora has obligations to provide housing, with some urgency, but high-density housing of the type proposed is not the way to do it.
“They (Kāinga Ora) are trying to paint it as some sort of utopia,” she says. “It is not.”
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years’ of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
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