Consumer Affairs Minister Craig Foss last week announced the introduction of a new bill to regulate money lending and repossession.
It includes measures such as banning lenders from the industry if they don't lend responsibly, putting controls in place against misleading and deceptive advertising, and stopping money lenders loaning money if the repayment will cause substantial hardship for the borrower.
Merivale Community Centre chief executive Graham Cameron said the changes were positive and long overdue.
"The reality is, between the trucks that go around selling home goods and electronics through finance companies, communities like ours get into debt very easily."
Mr Cameron said in Merivale, members of the community often reached out for money lenders at significant times of the year or when they ran into something unplanned, such as Christmas, deaths in the family or the car breaking down.
He said he hoped it would mean people were less able to borrow money for "frivolous" purchases such as a new car or the latest television and could instead use loans for emergencies.
Full Balance Financial Coaching manager Shula Newland said in the short term, the changes would be hard on consumers but in the long term they would be much better off.
"This could be bad for the borrower if they're going to be declined when before they could have got accepted. Long term effects are probably going to be positive because chances are these people shouldn't have been borrowing in the first place because they couldn't afford it."
She said if people didn't have debt to worry about, most would have plenty of money to live on.
Te Tuinga Whanau Support Services youth worker Rangi Ahipene said the changes all seemed positive and he totally supported them.
"Money lending has been like the wild west coming through in the last decade. This is a positive step from the government in terms of cleaning up the industry.
"A lot of these companies are targeting people who are always in financial crisis. They're perpetuating a person's debt."
Mr Ahipene said he thought society would be better off with regulations around money lending.
"They're just targeting those people who utilise their services out of sheer necessity and get into this position. It's all so easy - and when the word easy is used, there should be alarm bells ringing."
Tauranga MP Simon Bridges said some of the issues around loan sharks and unethical lending weren't as big a problem in Tauranga as they were in the bigger centres around the country, although it still affected the community.
"I have met with people from some of the voluntary social service agencies here and they believe these changes will be helpful," said Mr Bridges.
"What this bill really does is put into law that lenders need to think of the borrower's position and put themselves in their shoes to understand whether the borrower can afford it or not rather than say 'it's not my problem'."
Mr Bridges said the changes were a good thing as there were people with real financial literacy issues in New Zealand and they should be looked out for.