Naenae church protests housing crisis in area and non-use of HNZ vacant land

It has been four years since Housing NZ gave notice to hundreds of tenants throughout the Hutt Valley. Scores of houses were boarded up, then eventually knocked down, leaving 17,000sqm of barren land. This has helped create epic demand for housing, which has in turn lead to rental price hikes and housing prices pitched way out of reach for too many urgently needing housing.

“Housing is a basic human right, but we don’t see the Government responding to that need in our neighbourhood, “ St David’s spokesperson Rev Martin Robinson said.

“Instead, what we see is 100 applicants turning up to rent an ordinary house. We see overcrowding, with all of the flow on health and family issues. We see the numbers of people on MSD’s social housing register doubling from 107 in Dec 2014 to 215 in Dec 2016. And we see 94 of these are for Naenae.“

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Housing could be the defining issue for Hutt South politicians in the September election. Hutt City Mayor Ray Wallace wants to know what is happening with 17,000 square metres of vacant Housing New Zealand land in Lower Hutt. It’s a question he gets asked a lot and he reckons that come election time, voters will want an answer.

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