“We do not want to be known for our ghettos.”

That’s the message from petitioners who presented 400 signatures to Rotorua Lakes Council at its meeting on Thursday, opposing “any further Kāinga Ora developments in Rotorua”.

But it was met with the question of where would people in housing need may live if not in Kāinga Ora housing.

Save Glenholme board member Sarah Cameron was supported by about 15 other petitioners when she told the council residents felt “anxious and threatened”.

They had “witnessed, first hand, the anti-social behaviour by many of those house in the Fenton St [emergency housing] motels”.

 “The residents fear that these people, with their complex needs, will be housed in Kāinga Ora [social] homes once they have been moved out of the motels.”

Glenholme - a city fringe suburb, which bordered on Fenton St - was home to a “high number of retired and vulnerable residents who simply wish to live in peace”, she said.

 “Imagine [if] these elderly, vulnerable people end up with gang members living next door to them. Imagine they end up with meth addicts and these people might be in the minority, but if you end up with them, you’re stuck with them ... why should they be put in this position?”

She said Kāinga Ora could not give any assurances their clients would not engage in anti-social behaviour and, in her view, it did “not have a great reputation as a landlord”.

Rather than evicting “unruly” tenants, the policy was to relocate them, which in her view was a “lengthy process”.

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“In the meantime, decent, law-abiding neighbouring residents have been known to be hounded out of their homes.”

The petitioners at the Rotorua Lakes Council meeting. Photo / Felix Desmarais / LDR

Cameron said Kāinga Ora “insists ... tenants who cause mayhem are in the minority” but she questioned that statement as June official information response showed Kāinga Ora “did not keep records of disruptive incidents”.

She told the council she understood that between February and November this year, Kāinga Ora “received close to 6500 complaints”.

She said residents feared the effects of the council joining the tier 1 major urban centres covered by the medium density residential standards (MDRS), which meant three houses up to three storeys could be built on land without resource consent, and queried why the previous council had adopted it “without any public consultation”.

Cameron referenced a Cabinet paper on including Rotorua as a tier 1 city, in which the Ministry for the Environment’s advice acknowledged while the council, iwi partners, and the Rotorua Business Chamber supported the move, “wider engagement with affected parties would have been desirable”.

It also said the assessment was “complete, clear and convincing” and Rotorua had an “acute housing need - which is a key prerequisite for regulatory intervention”.

She said Rotorua’s residents and ratepayers “should have been involved in a decision that is quite possibly the most significant ever made” in the council’s history, and the group requested the council sought to revoke Rotorua’s tier 1 status “in an attempt to restore Rotorua’s reputation as an attractive and safe place to live and visit”.

She said the group was not “uncaring” and supported people from Rotorua who were “genuinely homeless”.

“We are a provincial town and do not need intensification. We do not want to be known as the benefit capital of New Zealand. We do not want to be known for our ghettos.”

Councillor Trevor Maxwell asked how many people signed the petition who did not live in the Glenholme area - from the wider community.

Cameron said the group had not recorded addresses but 400 signatures were collected in three weeks.

Maxwell said there was a housing crisis in Rotorua and asked if the group had considered where people would live.

Cameron said the group questioned the number of homeless people and the statistics. She said some parts of the call from the council to join tier 1 was based on the 2018 census, which was out of date.

A letter to Environment Minister David Parker from former mayor Steve Chadwick cited housing need projections from an independent report commissioned by the council by Market Economics, called the Rotorua Housing and Business Development Capacity Assessment 2021. In that document, it used population data from StatsNZ and Infometrics from 2020.

Councillor Rawiri Waru asked if it could be proved people in emergency housing were all from Rotorua, would that change the group’s mind.

“... I’m just trying to put another scenario in front of you.”

Referencing an April Ministry of Social Development report into emergency housing in Rotorua - which the Government described as finding the “vast majority” of people in emergency housing were from Rotorua - Cameron said the group queried the report’s methodology.

“We’ve been led to believe that 30 days in Rotorua classes you as a Rotorua resident, which is of concern.

“A lot of these people are being drawn into Rotorua, in fact, encouraged to come to Rotorua where they do have family, and I question why they can’t perhaps stay with family.”

In the meeting, Rotorua mayor Tania Tapsell said the petitioners had been “very clear” in their message.

Rotorua mayor Tania Tapsell. Photo / Felix Desmarais / LDR

She said she appreciated the group’s efforts to share their thoughts on the “critical issue” of housing and confirmed she saw housing as a priority.

“The Housing Accord, which we recently signed, will show significant difference ... we do have difficulties when [the] Government makes decisions that do severely restrict our influence.”

Tapsell, who was part of the previous council, said she appreciated “many of those decisions have happened without consultation with the community and that’s something that this council would also like to change”.

Tapsell said the petition’s presentation was valuable in a public forum where Kāinga Ora would also be exposed to it.

Later in the council meeting, speaking on emergency housing generally, council chief executive Geoff Williams said the Rotorua Housing Accord also intended to work towards improved support for people in public housing, which he said did not currently exist.

Kāinga Ora were approached for a response to the group’s claims, but declined to comment at this stage.