Levin needs more affordable housing and rental properties.
Levin needs more affordable housing and rental properties.
Levin is screaming out for more affordable housing as demand forces rents skyward and more people are forced into emergency housing.
The squeeze is on with reports of people sleeping in cars and tents, while others are lucky enough to have a motel room available through emergency housing provided by Ministry of Social Development.
Levin property management firm Rentables director-owner Lynda Brown said the problem was an increase in demand. As soon as a property was available for rent they had multiple applicants.
"We're turning away good people every day ... there just isn't enough houses available to rent," she said.
"It's been building up now for a year or more, it's supply and demand."
The demand for rental property had seen an increase in average rents across the board. A 1-2 bedroom home in Levin was rented at $300-$350 per week, a three bedroom home at $325-$450, and a home with four or more bedrooms could cost as much as $600 per week.
The current rental climate was a complete turnaround from past trends. Historically, landlords in the region had struggled to find tenants, she said.
Brown said it was almost impossible for a single person to find a one bedroom house. She knew of single people who had sought emergency housing and had been forced into multi-room motel units with strangers.
"The motels are overrun. People are living in cars or bunking down with family and friends," she said.
"We need more social housing badly."
Levin needs more affordable housing and rental properties.
Emergency housing wasn't cheap. In the quarter ending June 30, there were 304 approved emergency housing grants totalling $566,597 in Horowhenua.
One client was housed in a motel at a cost of $1700 a week and was unable to find a house to rent for seven months.
Manawatū Prisoner and Rehabilitation Service (PARS) field officer Dawn Maraki said that money could have been used as a deposit on a house.
Maraki said she there were people living in cars and tents. While the immediate answer was more houses to rent, the long-term solution was to empower people on a journey to home ownership.
Experience told her home ownership provided security and helped address a range of social issues affecting society: "A safe home is the first step."
But it required a multi-agency approach.
"We don't need a square. We need a circle or a triangle and we need to make it happen," she said.
Meanwhile, there was some good work being done behind the scenes to address the housing issue.
Ministry of Social Development was working together with Horowhenua District Council, community housing providers and community groups and had held hui to help find solutions.
MSD housing broker Justin Collins said more housing had to mean the right type of housing model. It was too simplistic to say "build more homes". More top-end housing wasn't addressing the current situation.
Collins said a community-wide approach was needed and already there had been workshops held with key stakeholders like HDC, Prisoner and Rehabilitation Services (PARS), WINZ, Whanau Ora and Muaūpoko Tribal Authority, Pasifika For Tomorrow, Neighbourhood Support and church groups.
"Local problems need local solutions," he said.
Collins said a range of factors were preventing people from getting off the emergency housing list and into rental properties.
There were "tools in the kete", he said. MSD had started a Ready to Rent programme that aimed to make people more appealing as a prospective tenant.
That included access to budgeting services and other agencies to reduce their perceived risk profile. holding workshops to upskill people in those areas.
HDC was helping facilitate discussions and had recently implemented a Housing Action Plan to help tackle the issue.
The plan showed anecdotal evidence that some young people don't know where they will be sleeping at night, while there were new migrants not earning sufficient income to cover rental accommodation, while some elderly residents on fixed incomes were facing increasing in housing costs.
HDC had engaged with local iwi, marae and hapū representatives, Pasifika church leaders and Fale Pasifika Horowhenua, local developers and builders through a Developers' Working Group, a Community Wellbeing Committee, and central government on the issue.
Meanwhile, there had recently been a change to emergency housing funding. As of last month, 25 per cent of any benefit had to go towards the cost of the emergency housing, where previously it was fully-funded.
