Motel owners at the coalface of housing shortage

Tudor Lodge Motel owner Sean Jones has to turn people away all the time. Not tourists, but Kiwis who are looking for a place to live, albeit temporarily.

At his Nelson motel, one woman has been in long-term emergency housing for the better part of a year, but by December, she’ll have to leave. The rooms were booked out months ago, Jones says.

He’s had other people come through Work and Income in the past. He says half of them were good, with the other half a ‘‘pain in the backside’’. In the end, he’s decided to stick with his corporate clients.

‘‘It’s one of those situations – either you take a couple of Work and Income people, either you go Work and Income or you stay as a motel. You can’t really do both.’’

He thinks that if his motel was mixed-use, his guests would be unlikely to want to stay there.

That thought was backed up by British tourist Rob Paul, who spent a month travelling around New Zealand staying in backpacker hostels. On the whole, he stresses, it was a ‘‘brilliant’’ experience. But there were two hostels that let the side down.

One, in Tasman District, was chocka when he arrived. Not with tourists, but with families. Rough families in emergency housing, who Paul says ‘‘looked pretty scary’’.

‘‘It was pretty horrible,’’ he told the Nelson Mail in a telephone interview from the UK.

Paul found himself feeling uncomfortable using the communal spaces like the kitchen. There were stains everywhere, and his overall verdict was that the place was ‘‘pretty horrid’’.

The manager of one of the hostels, who did not wish to be named, said that since Covid-19 and the closure of New Zealand’s borders, it had opened its doors to emergency housing, ‘‘and they obviously come with a lot of problems’’.

‘‘But now the tourists are starting to slowly come back. There’s a huge transitional period happening right now,’’ she said.

Paul came through the area when the hostel was still hosting a lot of people in emergency housing – but from December 1, it will be tourist accommodation only.

The woman said that if she hadn’t taken in emergency housing, her hostel would have closed.

Nelson has lost around 300 accommodation beds in the past two years – some moved into emergency housing, or have contracts with Housing First to house the homeless. Other, luxury accommodation was turned into private housing.

‘‘There are not enough motels out there at the moment,’’ Jones says.

‘‘Last month we were 92% full, and it’s not even the summer period yet.’’

Apart from the availability of beds, Jones is also concerned about the impact of rising rates and labour costs.

‘‘The price of accommodation is going to go up and up here, and in the long term, we’re going to end up losing customers . . . Nelson’s going to become a place where it’s just too expensive to go to.’’

At a nearby motel that was used for emergency housing, Jones says the police were there frequently, as were builders replacing damaged doors and property.

Abbey Court Motel manager Vicki Dunbar says there are still a lot of people out there needing homes. She’d had a man come in with his son the day before she spoke with the Nelson Mail, looking for somewhere to stay. The Motueka motel has only has five rooms, so Dunbar had to turn the pair away.

At the moment, the motel is home to a father and son, a mother with three children, and a woman on her own. But they are all due to leave before Christmas, when the motel will be open for tourists.

Accommodation shortages are being felt across the top of the south, as the region hosts workers, tourists, new residents, and those made homeless by August’s rain event.

Drop-in centre The Male Room manager Louis Chapman previously told the Nelson Mail that the facility had seen its busiest day ever at the end of October, with 56 people through the doors.

‘‘It’s far from your typical homeless people that are struggling to get houses at the moment,’’ Chapman said at the time. ‘‘It’s now gone to people who are working fulltime, families, mothers, [and] kids.’’

When a pop-up homeless shelter at the Unite Church closed in October, many of those who had slept at the church found themselves once again in tents.

While some moteliers, like Jones, have transitioned back to tourism, emergency housing provided a lifeline over the pandemic to around 20 businesses in the region.

Data from the Ministry for Social Development shows that it spent more than $3 million on emergency housing from April 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022 in Nelson and Tasman.

Chapman said the emptying out of long-termers in tourist accommodation was a ‘‘ common theme’’ every year from November through to February, particularly in the backpacker market and campgrounds, which would ‘‘prefer to have international tourists who are far more likely to spend money at the bars downstairs’’.

MSD Nelson, Marlborough and West Coast regional commissioner Craig Churchill said it was aware of the potential for pressure on motel demand with the border reopening and tourists returning.

Other moteliers in Nelson have pointed the finger at online accommodation platforms reducing the supply of long-term rentals.