Election 2023: Rotorua candidates discuss ideas for resolving housing issues

All six election candidates in the Rotorua electorate stood together before potential voters for the first time on Thursday night at a Meet Your Candidates event.

Rotorua Business Chamber chief executive Bryce Heard hosted the public event, and told Local Democracy Reporting afterwards it was a “spirited night” and he believed the more than 150-strong crowd left more informed about Rotorua-specific election issues.

Among the topics candidates responded to was the issue of housing, and a lack of it.

Heard gave each candidate one minute to answer how they would resolve the problem in Rotorua.

Act candidate Marten Rozeboom went first. His answer included changing funding and incentives to allow building, giving councils more funding for infrastructure, reforming the Building Act and creating a materials equivalent register.

Te Pāti Māori’s Merepeka Raukawa-Tait said half of the housing problem could be solved “if we knew what the problem was” and could be clear about what social, transitional and emergency housing was — and what needs were associated with each category.

National Party candidate Todd McClay said community housing providers and the private sector “had a very big role to play”.

“Yes we are getting more houses in Rotorua, but actually not the number or the type that we want ... the Government is competing against local people.”

Rotorua electorate MP candidates at an event on Thursday. Photo / Laura Smith

Under National, he said social housing and community housing providers could have a shared equity deal to make it easier to build.

He said the Resource Management Act (RMA) also needed to be simplified and reduce costs to builders by increasing product and competition.

NewZeal’s Kariana Black-Vercoe questioned how the problem had happened when data on birth rates and immigration had been available.

She said freeing up land and having high-density buildings were solutions, as well as reducing pressures on landlords.

Alternatively, she said the party would introduce a “ghost tax” for vacant properties.

The Labour Party’s Ben Sandford said in the last six years it had delivered more than 270 social houses in Rotorua, with another 500 “on the way”.

“That’s in contrast to National, who last time they were in Government delivered minus 42 social houses in Rotorua.”

He said it also delivered infrastructure funding, with $95 million to the Rotorua Lakes Council, as well as $35 million for developments east of the city.

“Building consents have more than doubled now what they were in 2017 across the country, housing density rules have changed ... we’ve banned offshore speculators from buying our houses.”

He said changes to the RMA would make it simpler.

Independent candidate Jonn Naera said he would go to central Government and collect information and meet with local Rotorua iwi trusts.

Voting opens on October 2, with election day on October 14, when all voting places will be open from 9am to 7pm.

Laura Smith is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. She previously reported general news for the Otago Daily Times and Southland Express, and has been a journalist for four years.

- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air