Pensioners worried about rent rise

Hastings District Council housing officer Jacqui Davis (left) and Swansea Village resident John Sturgess (right) listen as council group manager Alice Heather addresses yesterday's meeting. Photo / Paul Taylor

Age Concern is worried vulnerable tenants will struggle to pay an 11 per cent rent increase the Hastings District Council says it needs to pass on to prevent its pensioner housing scheme from becoming a drain on ratepayers.

The council is putting up the rents it charges tenants in about 220 units it runs at a number of rental complexes across the city, saying the increase is needed to fully recover the cost of the scheme.

The rent hike will see the cost of a single-bedroom unit rise from $108 to $120 a week.

Residents of the council's Swansea Village facility in Flaxmere met with Mayor Lawrence Yule, councillors and council staff yesterday to express their frustrations at the increase. Mr Yule said the council's pensioner housing service was run on a not-for-profit basis, meaning tenants were charged less than market rents, but those rents needed to be sufficient to recover costs.

At current rates, the scheme was not bringing in enough to pay for upgrades to the properties, such as bathroom makeovers, when they were required, Mr Yule said. "The council has got a policy that these are effectively rates-neutral, in other words the cost of running pensioner houses should be met by the rentals that are charged for those houses. That is what we have been doing and that is what we will continue to do."

Alice Heather, the council's group manager, community facilities and programmes, told the meeting she appreciated the increase was "a big hike" for residents. She said over the past four or five years the council had not increased rents sufficiently to cover costs, meaning it had depleted a $300,000 reserve fund to pay for upgrades to the properties. "We're now in the unpleasant situation of having to play catch-up to try and move the rents up to where they should be sitting."

The new rents would still be about 34 per cent below the market rate, and were comparable with pensioner rents charged by Napier City Council, she said. Residents would be able to apply for increased accommodation supplements through Work and Income, she said.

Age Concern Flaxmere manager Vanessa Rimene said she was worried Swansea residents would not be able to afford the increases and she could "guarantee" any accommodation supplement increase would not fully cover the rent rise. Residents were already struggling to pay for food, doctors bills and prescription charges, and to keep warm over winter, she said. "[During winter] they can't afford to pay their power bills so they stay at home under a blanket, they turn the lights off early at night and sit under a blanket to keep warm because they can't afford to run a heater," she said.