Rotorua MP Todd McClay of National, right, and Labour's Rotorua candidate Ben Sandford. Photo / Andrew Warner
Rotorua MP Todd McClay of National, right, and Labour's Rotorua candidate Ben Sandford. Photo / Andrew Warner
Rotorua MP Todd McClay has promised a National government would aim to rid Rotorua of emergency housing motels in two years and make out-of-towners ineligible for emergency housing.
Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell has welcomed the commitments, but Labour’s Rotorua candidate Ben Sandford says they would be a “disaster” for Rotorua — describing them as a “bad rehash” of old National policies he claims created the housing crisis — while Te Pāti Māori’s Merepeka Raukawa-Tait says the issues have developed over two decades.
McClay made the statements alongside housing spokesman Chris Bishop at National’s housing policy launch in Rotorua at the weekend.
The promises also included plans to increase social housing construction by opening it to community housing providers, and to make rents more affordable.
McClay said Labour had given up on Rotorua — one of New Zealand’s premier tourist destinations — and locals “just want their city back”.
He said National was determined to end the use of emergency housing motels around the country and to do this in Rotorua within two years — including those with resource consent under the District Plan.
Rotorua MP Todd McClay at National's housing policy launch.
Emergency housing applicants would need to satisfy stricter criteria to ensure they were homeless, and McClay said National hoped to stop out-of-towners from coming to Rotorua by requiring families receiving emergency housing grants to use them in the area they lived in, unless there was a good reason not to.
It was National’s plan to make it easier and quicker to get people out of motels and into houses.
McClay claimed Labour made Rotorua “ground zero of New Zealand’s social housing debacle”, with average weekly rents rising by more than $200 since 2017, compared with $175 nationally.
“National will improve the way social housing operates to prioritise those most in need, and at the same time, we will rebalance the private rental market by restoring interest deductibility for rentals properties, taking the bright-line test to two years, and making sensible changes to tenancy laws so there are more landlords and more affordable rents.”
These included establishing a Priority 1 category for families in motels for longer than three months (12 weeks), putting them at the front of the social housing queue.
National also pledged to build more social houses through Kāinga Ora and in partnership with community housing providers and other providers.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins called National’s plans “vague promises” that would not fix the housing crisis.
Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell. Photo / Andrew Warner
Tapsell, who unsuccessfully stood as the National candidate for the East Coast electorate in the last election, said there had been significant progress since the Rotorua Housing Accord was signed in November, but Rotorua was still experiencing issues relating to emergency housing and crime.
“To have emergency housing motels focused on by Todd as part of the election campaign can only be a good thing for Rotorua.”
Asked if she was concerned the policy could see a return of homeless people living on the streets and in Kuirau Park, as was the case before the proliferation of emergency housing motels, Tapsell said we had to “be careful what we wish for”.
But she said it was pleasing to see a focus on building social housing and addressing concerns about social housing being reliant on Kāinga Ora only.
“It can be an exciting opportunity to open it up to community housing providers, as it means developments will be locally led and there will be more guarantees that local families are going into social housing.”
She said a perfect example was Ngāti Uenukukopako’s 15-house papakāinga development at Rotokawa that offered iwi members, some from the motels, new homes.
“What we need is assurances that people being placed in motels genuinely need it and it is only a short solution. When we have families in motels for over two years, it is easy to see that the confidence has diminished.”
Labour's candidate for the Rotorua electorate, Ben Sandford. Photo / Andrew Warner
In response to McClay’s promises, Sandford said National seemed to want to make it more difficult for people to have homes and put roots down in communities and easier for people to be homeless.
“National’s policies are a bad rehash of their policies when they were last in government that created the housing crisis and record homelessness.”
He said the policies would be a “disaster” for Rotorua.
“What is happening now is working; we are building more homes, we are getting people out of emergency accommodation and into their own homes, and we are providing the services to make this work.
“The Rotorua Housing Accord is working, and we are seeing the transition out of the pandemic housing shortage, and the housing crisis that National created.”
He said there was “no quick fix”, but there were fixes — just not in National’s policies.
Te Pāti Māori Rotorua candidate Merepeka Raukawa-Tait. Photo / Andrew Warner
Te Pāti Māori Rotorua candidate Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, who has been outspoken about Rotorua’s emergency housing crisis, said the country’s housing issues were two decades in the making.
“We can’t blame the homeless. They didn’t sell off 38,000 state homes. People who are homeless don’t suffer from a lack of motivation to get themselves sorted, they suffer from homelessness - often compounded with other problems that may include persistent unemployment, physical disability, mental health and addiction issues. Housing is just one important area of their lives that needs addressing.”
Raukawa-Tait said time and money to reform Kāinga Ora would be better spend to support them to be successful in their work.
“Take a long-term view of the housing needs of families with children and stop threatening stricter criteria for the homeless. Stop telling the homeless they should be thankful for a sh***y motel unit.”
She said there were Rotorua families living in emergency housing elsewhere in New Zealand.
“I am grateful no one turned them away. There is no medicine as powerful as housing.”
The latest figures
The latest Rotorua Temporary Housing Dashboard shows in July there were:
699 people (375 adults and 324 children) living in motels that provide emergency housing.
13 contracted motels, 10 non-contracted motels, one transitional motel (Aywon Motel) and one Covid-19 response motel (Tuscany Villas).
186 households in contracted motels compared to 219 a year ago.
102 households non-contracted motels compared with 279 households a year ago.
951 people on the public housing waitlist, compared with 1146 a year ago.
The dashboard does not show how many non-contracted emergency housing motels there were last July, but the Rotorua Daily Post previously reported there were 62 at the peak of the emergency housing crisis at the start of 2022.
Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.
