The latest Nelson Tasman Housing Trust survey shows “a story of growing pain” with a significant increase in the number of people needing affordable housing.
In the trust’s latest six-monthly survey that monitors the housing need beyond the Government’s housing register in the Nelson and Richmond area, there were 696 households that needed affordable housing.
That was an increase from 633 households in the previous six-month survey and 528 households a year ago. Since 2018, the survey’s count has climbed a whopping 70 per cent. The latest figure is in addition to the 423 households on the Ministry of Social Development’s housing register that records those waiting for public housing.
The increase is a symptom of a “very significant, growing social problem,” according to Trust director Carrie Mozena.
“A number of housing providers are bringing more homes into reality, but this (survey) tells me the level of need is escalating beyond the speed with which we can build. So that’s a problem.”
She says the numbers in the survey are probably just the tip of the iceberg because they are the people asking community organisations for help or are staying in temporary accommodation.
“It shows the level of pain out there. It’s becoming harder for people to buy their own home and it’s becoming harder and harder – particularly for people on limited incomes – to afford private rentals.
“We have people paying 60 to 70 per cent of their weekly income on rent which leaves very, very little for food, clothing and transport. That’s the huge pain of it.
“Then there are those suffering in silence and it is hard to put numbers on them, though I think it is quite large.”
Carrie says the problem stems from the lack of social housing built in the past 30 years. In 1990, New Zealand’s population was 3.3 million and there were 85,000 state and council houses to provide affordable social housing.
While the population has increased to 5.2 million, she says the total number of Kāinga Ora, council and community houses has remained much the same. Though there are more developments underway now, New Zealand needs about 120,000 houses for those who cannot afford private rentals.
“It’s a mammoth task. It’s taken New Zealand about 30 years to get to this point and it will take us another 30 years to build our way out of it.”
She says momentum is building in social housing developments in Nelson and Tasman, between local housing providers and Kāinga Ora.
This year, the combined housing providers have completed 32 homes in the Nelson and Richmond areas. In the next two years, she expects between 60 and 100 new homes will be built, which will be the strongest growth in the subsidised housing supply for a very long time.
“I think social and public housing is the fence at the top of the cliff. The bottom of the cliff is where you have people in cars and people trying to find emergency housing.”
She says Nelson Tasman needs a range of people with different skill sets and that includes those on lower incomes, which means affordable housing needs to be provided for them.
The survey calculates the affordable housing need by adding up waitlists for different social housing providers, campgrounds and refugee families working with Red Cross.
