Opinion: Desperate times for the homeless as Rotorua gears up for the new tourist season

Things are about to take a turn for the worse for Rotorua's homeless families. Photo/File

It was nice of MP Paula Bennett to write a column in the Rotorua Daily Post (September 3) responding to my last column, and despite her moments of reassurance in her reply, as someone who works in Wellington and lives in Auckland, I just can't bring myself to believe that she knows what life is like for our people sleeping at Arawa racecourse, or trying to find a decent rental each day or families desperate for housing, being sent off to many of our local motels, as is the case in Rotorua at the moment.

I've spent quite a bit of time lately with an organisation that provides help for the homeless in Rotorua.

Love Soup is still in its infancy, but for the last three years has been led by two people with big hearts doing all that they can to help those that have found themselves without a home. It's a hard road trying to find a rental these days with some real estate agencies asking for work history CVs with your rental application.

According to Love Soup, there are 130 families currently housed in motels around Rotorua, due mostly to there being a severe lack of housing. WINZ and the Ministry of Social Development have had to resort to that because there is no emergency or transitional housing available in Rotorua.

Many of these motels have been happy to accommodate these families over the slower winter months, but things are about to change, drastically.

The weather is warming up and Rotorua businesses are getting ready for another bumper summer period. That means that my bar will be full, the tourism operators will be too and our motels will be faced with a crisis. To turf or not to turf.

Naturally, they will get bumped for the many visitors we play host to each year, so if these 130 families are put out of these motels, where will they go?

There is no emergency housing or transitional housing in Rotorua and the government has decided to hock off the state houses hand over fist.

Mum used to always say to me, don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions. So that said, what would Labour do if we were leading the charge.

Well Labour has released our policies on this.

We've said that we'd ring fence money for emergency housing and transitional housing so that we could get this problem sorted. We'd triple the amount that the government currently puts in to be able to fund this. We'd build more affordable houses to ensure that the supply met the demand, but more than that, we'd stop selling off our Housing NZ stock.

The National Party and the Maori Party both voted to sell off our state houses which in my opinion sold the Kiwi Dream down the Kaituna.

Desperate measures call for desperate actions and in Rotorua, things are about to get very desperate.

- Tamati Coffey is the Labour Party spokesman for Rotorua.