Clearing Napier’s state housing list: Kāinga Ora to build 60 homes

New homes on Seddon Cr overlooking the Chambers St Reserve, a well-known but little-used green space near Napier Boys' High School. Photo / Warren Buckland

The construction of more than 60 new homes in the Napier suburbs of Marewa and Maraenui will start in the next few months, according to Government housing agency Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities.

The confirmation of the plans comes nearing the completion of one of Hawke’s Bay’s largest social housing developments in more than 60 years, with half of the 24 homes off Seddon Cr, Marewa, now occupied and the remainder expected to be ready by late July.

Kāinga Ora acting East Coast regional director Roxanne Cribb said 60 new “public homes” had been “delivered” by the agency since July 2021, and there is an urgent need for “warm, dry homes for whānau”, and that there are now 157 homes in the process to be completed by June next year, with more “at the feasibility stage”.

More homes are planned for Seddon Cr and other Marewa sites (Barker and Rutherford roads) in Bright Cr (between the two suburbs), and in Masefield Ave, Maraenui, where several-storey units had been demolished.

The homes off Seddon Cr, Marewa, alongside the Chambers St reserve and in some case facing onto the green space, opposite Napier Boys’ High School, were commissioned byKainga Ora.

The project, on a site from which previous state housing was being removed, was announced in August 2021, and that the replacement would be finished in early 2023.

The need, escalating since the demolition and removal of many state homes in 2012-2017, has been highlighted by the climb in Napier demand on the State Housing Register waiting list to over 800 a year ago, and the number now falling to below 700 (690 at the end of March).

In Seddon Cr at least 12 of the 1-4 bedroom homes are now occupied, and the last eight will be completed and ready for occupation in July.

Cribb said: “Our build programme will make a significant difference to the number of homes available for the people living in cars, garages, motels or overcrowded homes,” she said.

“With limited opportunities to develop new areas for housing in Napier, our focus is on making efficient use of our land by redeveloping sites with older homes to provide additional Kāinga Ora homes,” she said. “Therefore a lot of the new homes will be built in the well-connected suburbs of Marewa, Onekawa East and Maraenui where there is already public housing.”

Kāinga Ora is progressing plans to build or facilitate up to 200 homes over seven other sites in Maraenui, and more than 70 are earmarked for Onekawa streets Cottrell Cr, Hitchings Ave, Venables Ave, Mclaren Cr and Cornford Pl.

Also earmarked for development in Napier are the sites of the Carnell St flats, between Georges Dr and Jull St.