Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce CEO Sharon Fifield’s calling out the government for its inaction over our rental housing crisis.
Fifield and Chamber chair Angela Spackman this week sent a letter to Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, Housing Minister Megan Woods, Queenstown mayor Glyn Lewers, council CEO Mike Theelen and strategic growth manager Anita Vanstone outlining three obvious short-term solutions to alleviate the immediate pressure.
The letter, advocating for ‘‘urgent solutions’’, says the lack of suitable rental accommodation has become ‘‘the most pressing problem’’ for most Chamber members.
In the immediate, the Chamber wants amendments made to the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA), by returning to ‘‘true fixed-term tenancies’’ to help seasonal workers; reinstate a ‘‘no-cause termination’’; and defer the deadline to meet healthy homes.
On the latter, the Chamber says while it supports the initiative, ‘‘the reality is that the cost of bringing some rental housing up to healthy homes standards is prohibitive’’.
‘‘The perverse effect of this law is that houses that are not compliant, but are still houses, sit empty while people in our district sleep in cars.’’
At present, houses have to meet the standards within 120 days of a new tenancy or, alternatively, by July, 2025.
If, however, all houses were still subject to the 2025 deadline, but could have a new tenancy in the interim, more houses would immediately open up.
‘‘It’s entirely inappropriate that the council cabins are sitting vacant for this reason,’’ the letter says.
‘‘Kainga Ora’s deferral on their own stock meeting these standards set the precedent.’’
The Chamber also call for the reinstatement of interest deductibility for rental properties.
In the medium/long-term, the Chamber’s ideas include more support and incentive for scaled ‘build-to-rent’ developments, which should be treated as its own class of commercial development; helping and encouraging innovative design-and-build methodologies to reduce building costs; and for the public sector to under-write essential rental developments to stop them stalling due to commercial viability.
Fifield tells Mountain Scene she’s confident they’re the right steps, but is frustrated by all the chatter about ‘‘what we could do [and] what could happen’’ and no action.
‘‘We’re at crisis point [but] it almost feels like you’re talking to a bit of a brick wall.
‘‘People forget this has got a huge mental and emotional stress for so many people.
‘‘For a government that cares about the wellbeing of people, ignoring this is just not good enough.’’
Predicting the rental housing crisis will become a major election issue, Fifield says the Chamber’s working to collect more data to quantify the issue and help tell the story, for example, working out how many of the 27% of unoccupied houses — per the 2018 census — could be realistically unlocked with some relaxation in the RTA.
One glaring gap, though, relates to the number of people needing housing.
Problematically, a lot of the Queenstown-Lakes population — particularly the short-term seasonal workforce — aren’t captured by any official data because they don’t qualify for benefits or any form of public housing and can’t register with the Ministry of Social Development.
‘‘That’s a bit of a struggle we have,’’ she says.
