Changing face of Huntly
Westside Stories examines the decline of a New Zealand town at the hands of unemployment and social dysfunction and those working to reclaim the proud Huntly that they once knew. Donna-Lee Biddle reports.
Allan Sanson drives through Huntly’s west side two or three times a day. His home, a farm in rural Waikato, is five kilometres west of Huntly.
The route home is unchanging – it’s the same houses, the same streets, and the same scenic view of the Waikato River.
But despite the familiar surroundings, one thing has changed.
There was a time when the Waikato district mayor could walk down the main street and greet people by name.
Nowadays, he barely knows anyone bar a few shopkeepers.
Sanson was a councillor for nine years and has been mayor for seven. In that time, the population in the wider district which sits astride the Waikato River in roughly the north of the Waikato, has almost doubled, from 46,000 people to 73,000. Most of the growth has happened in the last four to five years.
Huntly’s population at the 2013 census was 7000: 4119 in Huntly east, and 2935 in Huntly west.
The finish date for the Huntly section of the Waikato Expressway – the road that will allow motorists to bypass the north Waikato town – is looming.
In a town knocked hard by the closure of its big employing mines, Sanson has an optimistic view of Huntly’s future.
He’s identified the expressway as the ‘‘Pokeno to Hamilton corridor’’ of opportunity.
‘‘There wouldn’t be a week go by that I don’t have one or two business opportunities or people come to talk to me about their business ideas.’’
An hour’s drive to South Auckland and 20 minutes to Hamilton, Huntly’s spot on the expressway has the potential to provide opportunities for new businesses.
As part of a district plan review, plans are being made to rezone a large amount of land in Huntly, both residential and industry. Sanson’s kept mum about the types of businesses and their scale, however. And work is also being done to grow communities from Huntly through to Pokeno.
‘‘Huntly sits at the cusp of a huge amount of growth so we’re dealing on a daily basis with issues around how we manage that growth.
‘‘Huntly has been identified as a location for large scale employment so a large industrial node is going to be zoned in Huntly for that purpose and that’s mainly because it sits strategically in a particular point.
‘‘So what we will see is a lot of new homes in Huntly over the next decade which will change the dynamics of the community.’’
The makeup of Huntly has changed immensely, Sanson says. And he puts it down to two things: An increase in property values and location.
In 2006, Huntly’s median house price was $196,000. Ten years later, in 2016, the median was $294,750, according to figures from CoreLogic.
The prices are a far cry from Auckland’s but the town and it’s comparatively cheap housing is only a stone’s throw from the big smoke and proven a strong lure.
More than 50 homes have been sold in Huntly over the past few months, with more than half of those located in Huntly east.
Sanson says as a consequence, it’s no longer affordable for many to rent or purchase property in Huntly. And given the town sits in the Golden Triangle, between Hamilton, Auckland and Tauranga, it’s attracted a ‘‘considerable number of transient people’’.
As at December 2017, there were 380 state houses in the Waikato district, with most being three-bedroom homes. And of that number, only four were vacant.
Private rentals are also scarce, with one real estate agency listing just eight properties. A three-bed, one-bath home in Huntly west was listed for $350, whereas a four-bed, two-bath in Huntly east was listed at $500 per week.
Sanson says the majority of Huntly’s state houses are in the west. As a consequence, several transient families are relocating to Huntly west from cities like Auckland and Hamilton – and they’re bringing trouble with them.
The latest census data for Huntly’s east and west areas is similar and at the end of the scale no one wants to be at: Huntly east has a deprivation index score of 9, while the west has a score of 10. The median personal income for residents in the east was $22,800 in 2013, and $19,200 for residents in the west.
But it’s ethnicity that divides the town.
Ma¯ ori make up the majority of Huntly west residents, with 1773 identifying themselves as Ma¯ ori at the last census. The next dominant ethnicity is European, with 972 residents. In Huntly east, Europeans make up the majority of residents, with 2676. There are half that number of Ma¯ ori in the east – 1248.
‘‘There’s a number of Housing Corp [Housing New Zealand] houses in Huntly west and I think some of the families that have relocated there have actually set up around affordability and, consequently, they’ve brought their problems from other areas and they’ve landed on our doorstep.
‘‘One of my councillors said to me this morning, ‘Some of these problem children are actually imports, they’re not local kids.’
‘‘And this is the trouble – they don’t have the same tie to the community as a child and the parents who have actually been brought up [in Huntly]. If you’re actually a transient, you don’t have that same bond.’’
In February, the Waikato Times highlighted a spate of robberies by a mob of youth in Huntly west. The target was an elderly couple in their 80s who moved to the area from Whangarei 16 years ago to retire.
The couple were robbed 10 times and in one incident, the thief was so brazen as to rob the couple during the day and while they were home.
It’s the last thing a mayor wants their town known for.
‘‘Huntly has an element of youth who are probably not, how do I say it? Not as user-friendly as we would like them to be or as occupied in a way they should be, but that’s the same everywhere.
‘‘There’s this thing about ‘our youth need to be occupied’ but it’s important our community stand up and say, we don’t want that sort of behaviour in our towns.’’
Sanson says bringing up a child is not easy. He has three adult children himself, but says it’s the parents who need to be held accountable when their child causes trouble.
‘‘It starts with the parenting, so if the parenting is wrong . . . I won’t say it happens in all cases, but it certainly happens in a high percentage and within a particular group or sector in our community and, unfortunately, I don’t know what the answer is.
‘‘The thing that worries me is everybody thinks there is an ambulance at the bottom of the hill, whether it’s council or police – it’s everyone else’s problem. But it’s a community problem.
‘‘If we could show another path to these kids that are the problem – be it it sports, be it activities, be it something else, other than them only seeing one thing – and that’s violence and theft in the community.
‘‘Huntly has one thing that no one else has: It has location, it actually has a number of lakes and walkways and more importantly, it has great people, a lot of great people. So as much as we hear the negative, there’s a tonne of positive, we just don’t hear it.’’
The next instalment of Westside Stories looks at the schools and sports clubs that provide islands of stability and success in the most deprived parts of Huntly west.
‘‘Huntly sits at the cusp of a huge amount of growth so we’re dealing on a daily basis with issues around how we manage that growth. Mayor Allan Sanson