Nine of the village's 19 homes would be soon removed from the site and relocated. Photo / Emma Houpt
Nine of the village's 19 homes would be soon removed from the site and relocated. Photo / Emma Houpt
About half the homes in Pāpāmoa's Opal Drive transitional housing village will soon be removed to make way for a $22 million pump station.
Most of the tenants of these nine homes already had a new place to live with the temporary lease on the Tauranga City Council land setto expire on Sunday.
The new pump station will replace the existing one, which the council says is at the "end of its life".
The village, Kāinga Atawhai, is managed by the Tauranga Community Housing Trust and has a mix of two- and three-bedroom homes designed to be relocatable.
Operations manager Lyla Atutahi said nine of the Kāinga Atawhai village's 19 homes would be moved.
She said the five-year lease for the land the nine homes were on was due to expire and their removal had been planned since the village's inception in 2017.
She said all tenants had been moved to new community housing, including into homes newly bought by Kaingā Ora for the trust, or had found other places to live.
The village's other 10 homes were on land with a longer-term lease and would remain on the site and tenanted as transitional housing until that lease was up.
She said Tauranga had benefitted from having transitional housing available alongside programmes for residents, and she was proud of the trust's record of helping people move out of the social housing system for good.
Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities Bay of Plenty regional director Darren Toy. Photo / George Novak
Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities Bay of Plenty regional director Darren Toy said the nine homes would not be demolished or sold.
It had been "exploring options" to relocate them and had been looking across the wider Bay of Plenty for a location due to land constraints in Tauranga.
"Given the strong demand for housing it's vital we continue to provide this warm, dry short-term housing for those with an urgent need for a place to stay."
It would work with the trust to engage with neighbours once suitable land options had been identified, he said.
He said three properties had been purchased in Pāpāmoa and it was looking at purchasing a fourth to be leased to the trust to provide transitional housing.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said relocatable housing was used at this site because of the short-term land lease.
They labelled the project as a "success" because of the way various agencies worked together to house vulnerable community members and the lessons learned that could be applied to future transitional housing projects.
The transitional housing village on Opal Drive. Photo / Emma Houpt
Tauranga City Council acting director of city waters Wally Potts said the existing pump station was at the "end of its life".
As agreed with Kāinga Ora when the village was created, Potts said the lease site was split into two to provide for the new pump station when it was needed.
The rest of the land could continue to be used for housing.
Design work for the $22-million project was under way and construction would be completed a "few months" after a detailed design was completed.
Once the houses were removed council staff would need access to the site to undertake geotechnical investigations, he said.
Potts said the project was "essential to service existing and future development".
"This is a key pump station that moves all the wastewater from eastern Pāpāmoa to Te Maunga wastewater treatment plant."
