Rents forcing Queenstown locals out

Queenstown locals are among those being priced out of the rental market. Photo / file

It's not just itinerant workers who are being priced out of Queenstown's rental market: Long-term residents are being left without stable accommodation, too.

Recent focus on Queenstown's property market has highlighted how transient workers were living in expensive, crowded or improvised accommodation in New Zealand's adventure capital.

Local commentators apportion much of the blame to the rise of Airbnb, with Queenstown property owners opting to offer short-term rentals through the online accommodation site rather than getting long-term tenants.

Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust executive officer Julie Scott said it was not just transient workers who were struggling to find somewhere to live.

"There are examples we see all the time of families who have been renting for five, 10 years in a property and have been paying $450 a week and all of a sudden they're paying $700 a week. They can't afford it so they're having to move," she said.

"A lot of people are leaving town, families, and this is so disruptive when kids are in school and they're part of the community. It's not healthy for children and it puts a lot of stress on the parents."

Scott said the flow-on effects of the housing situation were starting to show in Queenstown, including increased instances of domestic violence and mental illness.

"In the past 12 months it's turned into a genuine rental crisis," she said. "You hear stories all the time about people paying big money to live in a caravan with access to a kitchen along with 15 others in a pretty scummy flat."

The trust had 420 households on its waiting list for housing assistance. Only permanent residents were eligible for such assistance, further proof it was locals rather than just travellers who were struggling, she said.

"At the moment we're looking for opportunities to build large-scale developments to take some of that pressure off," Scott said.

"The council is looking into ways to mitigate the Airbnb issue but it is relatively new in the scheme of things and it takes time to work out how we're going to stop it from taking long-term rental properties off the market."

Yesterday, the Herald found numerous advertisements for crowded or improvised accommodation, including a campervan in a garage.

Property manager Conrad Goodger, who owns 10 Queenstown properties along with several associates, said his rooms in his rentals were full 99 per cent of the time "since the day Airbnb came to town".

Most of the rooms in his properties were twin-share, some were three to a room and he had two large rooms which slept four.

Goodger said that last year he lived in one of his six-bedroom houses with 17 other people.

Queenstown Mayor Jim Boult was concerned about the lack of rental properties and the crowded offerings on the market.

"Until more accommodation is built, it's a double-edged sword because if we start trying to restrict the number of people in these houses, then where are they going to go?"