‘Nowhere to go’
Rotorua renter desperate to avoid return to emergency housing
Rotorua renter Abigail Hargreaves fears she will end up back into emergency housing when she loses her rented sleepout, saying she will have “nowhere to go”.
The 29-year-old said she had moved six times in two years due to “ridiculous” rental prices in Rotorua. This included a stint in an emergency housing motel.
Now the sickness beneficiary and cat owner, who needs to move by December 11, faces house hunting heading into a summer a Trade Me analyst says could bring a “new record high rent” in Rotorua if supply does not keep up with demand.
The latest Trade Me figures, for October, put Rotorua’s median weekly rental price at $500 – the same as September and as October last year, but down from a record $550 in June. Rental prices increased the past two summers.
And a local rental expert said while some landlords had been reluctant to put rents up, rising costs meant increases were inevitable.
Hargreaves said Rotorua was “one of the worst places to find a place to actually live unless you’re an elderly person, or unless you’re working or unless you don’t have a pet”.
Hargreaves was living in sleepout, which she said she loved “so much”, paying $180 per week but the owner had decided to prepare the home to be sold.
“I was so settled where I am now — I loved it because it was nice, I had my own kitchenette, I was only
a sharing a bathroom inside, I got along with the landlady … it was right next to shopping areas and it’s walking distance to the bus [stop].
“Now I have to move again, and it’s not very easy for somebody like me to actually find a place to live.”
She said if she did not find a place to live by December 11, “I will have nowhere to go and I have to go back into emergency housing”.
She believed a lot of renters were facing having to move because the home was being sold or rented to family members.
“It’s just really hard for people who [are] renting.”
Hargreaves said she was looking for “anything” — “a flatting situation, a sleepout, something that I can call my own so I don’t have to move again.”
However, having a cat and not working made it difficult.
She described her cat as her “support animal” and said she did not work because she could not work, not because she did not want to.
Hargreaves had applied for about five or six rooms, and one sleepout. She wanted something permanent and hoped to be settled by her upcoming 30th birthday so she could enjoy the milestone “without having