Affordable housing comes to Arrowtown
The first residents are moving into Arrowtown's new neighbourhood, the 68-home Tewa Banks development.
Housing Minister Chris Bishop yesterday cut the ribbon on the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust project, which has been eight years in the making.
It couldn't come soon enough. Some 1,350 households are now on the Trust's waiting list for affordable housing in the district.
"That's roughly about 3,500 people," Trust chair Richard Thomas says. "To put that in context, it's about 7% of the resident population of Queenstown Lakes District."
Six houses in Tewa Banks, off Jopp Street, are now completed. They are one-bedroom properties, available to seniors on the government's public housing register, complete with low-maintenance gardens.
Like all the properties in the development, they're connected to a ground source heat pump, which means they'll be affordable to live in too, with heating bills as little as $30 per month.
The remaining nine homes in stage one should be completed by February. They'll be a mix of two and three-bedroom homes, already allocated to households on the waiting list, under one of the Trust's shared ownership or rental models.
All 68 homes are scheduled for completion by 2026, in what is the Trust's largest development to date. They include 15 social housing homes, four rent-to-buy homes, five affordable rentals, and 44 assisted ownership.
Three-bedroom homes will be available for around $477,000 under the assisted ownership model. In historic Arrowtown, one of Queenstown's more expensive places to live, the median sale price over the past 12 months has been five times that figure, some $2.43 million, while the median rental price is $975 per week.
Those house prices, unattainable for even most medium income families, convinced Queenstown Lakes District Council, under the previous mayor Jim Boult, to sell the $10m Jopp St site to the Trust for the nominal sum of just $1. The 3.6 hectare site is former oxidation ponds land, which were capped in the 1990s.
At the ribbon-cutting yesterday, Trust chief executive Julie Scott thanked Boult and also former councillor John McDonald who was "a huge advocate for affordable housing in the district" during his time on council. A street has been named after him in the development.
Scott says it Tewa Banks has been "probably the most challenging and lengthy rodeo that I've ever been part of".
"Tewa Banks has not been without push back from certain public factions, and we are extremely grateful to various community organisations within Arrowtown who have supported us and publicly spoken up for us."
That includes the Village Association's Planning and Advisory Group, the Arrowtown Business and Promotional Association, Arrowtown Golf Club and Arrowtown Primary School.
"You've made our ride a little easier and smoother."
Scott also thanked Central Government for providing funding support for the development, through three different funding avenues.
Housing Minister Bishop lauded the collaboration between the Trust, QLDC and government and also the mixed nature of the Tewa Banks.
"Sometimes when you people build social housing, you build a lot of it, and it's just social housing, and that gets people's backs up, and the social license dissipates, or at least diminishes," Bishop says.
"What people are up for, and what the government's up for, is mixed communities where social housing is integrated into the rest of the community, where you've got private homes, private rentals and affordable rentals and affordable social housing and progressive home ownership."
At the Community Housing Aotearoa Conference earlier in the week, Bishop announced the Coalition Government would increase support for community housing providers (CHPs) such as Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust.
“The Government wants CHPs to be treated on a level playing field with the state-owned Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities when it comes to competing for funding to deliver social housing," he told the conference.
"Unlike the last government, we are agnostic as to whether the state or the community sector delivers social housing."
He says the Government will remove barriers faced the CHPs around financing, leasing and capital funding, while the Reserve Bank is reviewing risk weights, which currently penalises CHPs and reduces their ability to borrow at competitive rates from banks.
Breen Construction is the main building contractor for Tewa Banks, with the project managed by Devcorp's Tim Henry. SouthRoads and Wilson Contractors have completed the roads, footpaths and earthwork.
