Letters: Where will these new homes be built?

Rotorua Ralph Overby, Associate Social Housing Minister Alfred Ngaro, Kylie Overby and MP Todd McClay discuss the new state houses. Photo/file

Thank you to your correspondent Ryan Grey (Letters, April 29), for raising important questions concerning the recent announcement by MP Todd McClay , who promises 117 new State homes.

Would mayor Steve Chadwick and Todd McClay enlighten readers with concrete details regarding the infrastucture, and available land required to make this promise a reality?

Yet another winter is upon us. Are the existing transitional houses sufficient to house the burgeoning numbers of homeless in Rotorua, which has the shameful record of having the second highest level of homelessness in New Zealand.

Mrs Chadwick and Mr McClay, we await your responses with interest.

JACKIE EVANS
Rotorua

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With all the noise about housing the general populas in affordable homes, I'd like to voice my opinion on the subject.

It's time to look at the past (60s and 70s) and figure out making it easier for ordinary working class people to get into their own homes.

When I got married in 1969 we seated a house and figured out that that was not going to take us anywhere.

I was working as a heavy equipment mechanic earning good pay but not enough to save enough for a deposit on a house.

So, I went driving log trucks for about 16 months and saved enough to sort out a deposit
on a house in a new subdivision that was going to be started.

The Beazley Home franchise were offering about a dozen different plans.

In those days you could get a state advances loan or a Maori Affairs loan and capitalise on your family benefit.

We had three kids to capitalise on . . . We got into our first home.

New, even if it was "only a Beazley home", it got us paying rent with the end result being we owned it outright.

I can't figure out why the young people today have to have all the flash harry type houses. It doesn't make the bed any more comfortable or the food any more nutritious.

Keith Hay Homes should be flat out building affordable homes.

Come on, get real, stop immigration and get Kiwis into their own homes.

(Abridged)
ROD PETTERSON
Rotorua