Labour leader talks housing during Rotorua visit

The poor state of housing in Rotorua and outsiders pricing Rotorua people out of the housing market are two of the key issues people have raised with Labour leader Andrew Little during his visit to Rotorua.

Mr Little was in the city yesterday meeting with various groups.

He said one of the issues raised with him was the number of Aucklanders who were now buying into Rotorua. He said because of the property boom and extra value of their homes, they were able to "price out locals".

Mr Little said he had heard stories of Aucklanders paying $50,000 to $100,000 more than locals and pricing them out of the market.

He said he had also spoken to people about the difficulties of finding warm, dry houses to rent.

It was apparent something needed to be done to address the issue of people living in cold, damp houses and some measures needed to be put in place to make sure houses had appropriate heating, hot running water and could be heated safely, he said.

A sense that Rotorua had plateaued in terms of growth, population increase and businesses investment was concerning, he said.

"There is nothing that is giving it a big boost."

He said it was important that central government worked with local government with issues like growth.

"It can't all be driven out of Wellington."

Mr Little said Labour wanted to start up a regional development fund looking at funding significant infrastructure to give regions a better chance of attracting private investment.

He also raised the possibility of moving Government department jobs that didn't need to be in Wellington into the regions and looking at incentives to encourage immigrants to look at settling in the regions.