Four fires in seven months in Rotorua emergency accommodation

RotoVegas Motel is one of the motels on Fenton St in Rotorua that is being used for emergency accommodation. Photo / Google

By RNZ

A group opposing emergency housing on Rotorua's motel strip says a fourth fire in seven months is unacceptable.

Emergency services were called to RotoVegas Motel on Fenton St on Saturday afternoon.

One person suffered from smoke inhalation.

Restore Rotorua chair Trevor Newbrook said the Government was using Rotorua as a dumping ground for people needing emergency housing.

"They keep bringing people here, they keep denying it but it keeps happening, so I think that that's a big issue."

So many fires at the motels used by the Ministry of Social Development were putting the community at risk, he said.

Newbrook believed motels should not be used as long-term accommodation.

Much of the motel accommodation on Fenton St in Rotorua has been converted from tourist accommodation to emergency housing.

But Rotorua MP Todd McClay has said that Fenton St was not a good place for emergency housing and that the Government was "using Rotorua as a dumping ground for the country's problems".

In February, McClay told Local Democracy Reporting that he had spoken to motel owners in Rotorua who expected to accommodate people for "up to five years".

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said that emergency accommodation was a "stopgap measure" until more permanent solutions were available and that she had concerns about its usage long-term.

Public housing in Rotorua had increased but more was needed to meet demand, she said.

The Ministry for Housing and Urban Development has applied for resource consent to turn 12 Rotorua motels, five of them on Fenton St, into transitional housing for more than 1000 people.

The ministry already contracts those motels to house homeless people, but the resource consent will make it legal to run them as emergency and transitional housing for up to five years, with wraparound services for the residents, including 24-hour security.