Porirua council sale plan upsets tenants
Porirua boasts some of the highest rents in the country but the local council wants out of the social housing game, mounting another attempt to sell off the remaining 26 units on its books.
The council is asking ratepayers what it should do with the Moana Court Flats in Tı¯tahi Bay as part of its draft Long-Term Plan (LTP) consultation currently under way. With a capital value of $3.3 million, the Wellington City Council-run complex was built in 1974 as low-cost pensioner accommodation.
Porirua Mayor Anita Baker felt the council should be concentrating on infrastructure, roading and fixing the harbour, rather than the provision of social housing which she said was not its ‘‘particular expertise’’.
However, Moana Court residents – some aged in their 90s – were fearful of where they may end up, as the council considers offloading the ‘‘run down’’ flats to a community housing provider or the Crown, believing either would be better placed to provide wraparound support to tenants.
It would also enable it to claw back $80,000 in operational costs each year and absolve itself of having to find $160,000 over the next two years for major repairs and improvements.
While Nga¯ti Toa Rangatira has expressed an interest in taking on Moana Court, residents remained anxious.
‘‘It is scary s... and everybody is unsettled,’’ a resident, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said.
‘‘I don’t think they should sell the place. I really don’t. I think they should pull their hands out of their backsides, behave and look after us, because we deserve to be looked after at our age. It has totally unsettled me, thinking in a couple of weeks, am I still going to have my home?’’
Despite any sale being contingent on providing alternative accommodation at the same or better terms than now, another resident worried that might be ‘‘a bit hard’’.
‘‘Where do you find 26 tenants a home?’’ they asked.
Tenants received a letter from the council’s general manager for city growth and partnerships, Steve Perdia, on March 31, inviting them to an April 22 meeting to talk over the issue. ‘‘It’s important to us your needs are properly looked after,’’ he wrote.
Former Porirua mayor Nick Leggett, who was in office when the Wellington council took over running the units eight years ago, felt the Porirua council was still not equipped to provide social housing. ‘‘It lacks the scale to do it effectively. ‘‘With Nga¯ ti Toa Rangatira and Ka¯ inga Ora, with hundreds of houses each, already working effectively in the city, it makes sense that Moana Court be managed by one of those two entities,’’ Leggett said.
Ka¯inga Ora provides more than 2000 social housing places in Porirua, with about 900 of them run by the iwi.
The council’s desire to exit social housing is in sharp contrast to Ka¯ piti Coast District Council which is seeking a mandate to take a more substantive role in housing its community. In October 2020, the region, a short drive up State Highway 1, had a public housing waiting list of 169.
Citing ‘‘significant and growing housing access, affordability issues’’ and rising rents, KCDC has budgeted $158,000 to review its older persons’ housing for ‘‘further development opportunities’’, and $631,000 to ‘‘identify potential housing partnerships and how they could work’’, as outlined in its draft LTP.
Wellington City Council, which has run Moana Court for more than eight years, owns 1927 social housing properties in its own patch, accommodating more than 3500 tenants.
Porirua chief executive Wendy Walker said the flats were not fit for purpose. While work was being done to bring them up to standard, they were ‘‘constrained by being small and old’’, she said. ‘‘We do not have the appropriate scale to be an effective social landlord.’’