Rough river sleepers spurred Fiona Chase’s home spun solution for ‘acute’ housing crisis

Kids have learned to swim in this bend in the river, close to town. Not on Tuesday this week though, with a chill wind blowing and the water churning brown from recent rain. Sometimes youngsters also chose to sleep by the river, maybe do some fishing, as the fancy took them.

But today’s parents, those who remember swimming and sleeping on its banks, don’t want their own kids swimming there because they’re concerned about the state of the water. The Whanganui River, recognised as a living entity, was returned to the people in 2017 broken and dammed, says local woman Riana Brown.

In March, Fiona Kahukura Chase, who manages the nearby campground, came across something new here. Four cars were parked up on the river bank, squeezed in near the council toilets.

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It was a shock. The kids might choose to spend a night by the river from time to time, but she had never seen people sleeping there in cars.

So Chase did something about it. She and her wife bought a caravan for one of the women, and that was followed in turn by three more as they spent a chunk of their life savings to play a part in tackling what amounts to a housing crisis in her home town.

Taumarunui. A good place to stop for a cuppa if you’re driving through, an hour from Te Kūiti, an hour from Ruapehu. Gateway to the Whanganui River, and to the Forgotten Highway. Well enough known that Peter Cape could write a folk song in the 1950s about Taumarunui on the main trunk line.

Taumarunui. Farming, freezing works, forestry, the railway – the living was good back in the day with plenty of employment. Back in the 80s, the town had 54 softball teams and one of them was handy enough to make the nationals. Chase was a rep in those days, a pacey outfielder. She remembers a town with jobs and with houses, the latter often supported by Māori Affairs.

That was then. New Zealand’s economic river cut a new channel, and left towns like Taumarunui behind. There are no softball teams now, not many netball teams, Chase says, and the living can be hard.

Chase returned from Australia to Taumarunui about four years ago, and what she saw disturbed her. She found her whānau in a worse situation than she had seen, or than her mother had seen. Things were worse than during the Depression and war years, she says. Hers may be the last of the lucky generations, and even they are not unscathed.

Sheep are plentiful on the rolling, tree-studded farmland around Taumarunui and the shearing sheds have always been a place to make some decent money.

That’s what Maria Harris did. But she had to give up the sheds about three years ago because of asthma. Things got hard. She and a friend eventually found themselves in transitional housing, and then she says she got asked to leave, for reasons she doesn’t want to go into. She and her friend moved in with another friend who was due to leave his rental, the idea being they would stay on once he’d gone. But “out of the blue” he handed in his notice.

“And we were back out there again.”

With prices skyrocketing and housing stock tight, they couldn’t find another rental. Forty-eight years after Harris arrived in Taumarunui as a 6-year-old, she was homeless in her hometown.

She says she had been couch hopping since late last year, and then she and her friend took to their cars and parked up beside the river. One night became two, two nights became a week, a week stretched out to nearly three. They would drive up and down parking at various spots near public toilets. They used the showers at the town’s information centre.

“It was all right but then it wasn’t all right, if you can understand what I mean. You know, you kind of make it work for yourself,” she says.

“Yeah, it was hard. It was hard. But like I said, you make do with what you’ve got. Honestly, we were lucky enough to have our vehicles because we both own a vehicle. My mate had his car and I had mine and then another friend, she was sleeping in her car also, and we just all hooked up together.”

That’s when Fiona Chase found them.

Harris is now living in the caravan provided by Chase, paying $100 a week in rent. Her friend is staying in a caravan at Ōhura, and she’s unsure what has happened to the other friend who had joined them. “I haven’t seen her for ages. I hope she’s all right.”

Chase has the statistics at her fingertips. Māori in Ruapehu have an average wage of $18,500, she says. “I don’t know how anyone can survive on that.” And the eastern end of Taumarunui has a 66% Māori population. She is seeing poverty. “Things have become acute beyond a crisis.”

Meanwhile, house prices have done the New Zealand Covid thing, but even more so. Kelvin Davidson, chief property economist at CoreLogic, says the median property value in Taumarunui is $353,000, according to the company’s computer-based model. That’s very low compared to many other parts of the country. “However, the change has been pretty dramatic.” The figure is 110% higher than it was three years ago, meaning prices have more than doubled in that time. Over the same period nationally, the change is about 50%, Davidson says.

The median rent, meanwhile, is $363. That is low by national standards, but has also grown quickly – up 25% In the past year.

“There’s certainly been a lot of growth and when you see that type of thing you see hardship start to become an issue.”

Horizons regional councillor Weston Kirton says the town’s housing stock has been ageing, with some houses well over 100 years old. The declining stock has relied heavily on Housing New Zealand and its equivalents, he says. Under a previous government, about 50 state houses were “shipped out” and not replaced.

“It was fair to say that the population of this area was declining. You saw urban drift from the rural areas so it wasn’t such a concern then. But in recent times, like many other rural areas, we’re seeing a resurgence of population.”

In the Ruapehu district, that is partly due to tourism which he says is taking off.

Kirton is seeing people from the likes of Auckland, Wellington and Australia coming into the area, buying up housing stock, and renting it.

“We find ourselves now in a dilemma of increased population, low stock numbers, the discord with the affordability, we have a high number of the community in a low income bracket. We have, my understanding is, 50% Māori, who tend not to own homes for various reasons. And therefore, in my view, we have a clash.”

He welcomes a recently completed build of six affordable council homes in Ōhakune, made possible using government funding because there was “shovel-ready” council land available, but says the greater need is in Taumarunui. He questions the lack of shovel-ready land in the town, and says the “vehicle” doesn’t exist to drive a housing project there, potentially by way of a partnership with iwi or investors.

“There has been money available, as we know, throughout the country for housing, it just hadn’t landed here in Taumarunui.”

The council has been consulting over rezoning some land, he says. “And I’m thinking to myself, hang on, I went to a consultation process where they had the money promised. And it was a matter of where we’re going to build these houses, not a matter of rezoning.”

Chase echoes his sentiments when it comes to the council’s housing strategy. The council says it has no land and needs partners, including iwi, she says.

“But they’ve got all our land. So it’s somewhat ironic to ask iwi for land to build community housing,” she says. “Iwi have iwi to look after. Council have the entire citizens to look after. That’s their responsibility. It’s not iwi’s.”

The plan won’t work, so why persist with it, she asks.

Ruapehu chief executive Clive Manley acknowledges the need in Taumarunui for a range of housing. “Overcrowding in substandard housing, it’s just totally unacceptable.”

But he says Ōhakune has just as many problems as Taumarunui despite its apparent affluence. For locals, that affluence makes housing more expensive, while the holiday home market, with about 50% of the town’s stock, tends to soak up what comes available.

“But we do accept Taumarunui has real issues that we want to address,” he says. The council had a crack at developing housing in the town, applying for government money after Covid struck. The council applied for $34 million for the district, which the government scaled back to $7 million, saying that it was subject to due diligence and being shovel ready.

The council thought it had the perfect spot in Taumarunui at the former saleyards at the south end of the town, but the land was flood prone and there were various problems that meant it couldn’t be built on straight away, Manley says.

They were able to use some of the money to get the six houses built on council land in Ōhakune, however, with the hope the government will work with them to build more. The council also has pensioner housing in each of its three main towns, Taumarunui, Ōhakune and Raetihi.

The disappointment of the saleyards discovery led the council to consultation over a draft plan aimed at freeing up land for housing development in Taumarunui, including vacant commercial and retail land near the main street. Manley says some buildings were bought up and land banked when prices were cheap, and are sitting vacant. Some require earthquake strengthening. Rezoning to allow multi-use including housing may make development more economic. As part of that, the council could look at a joint venture to build affordable workers’ accommodation, he says.

If the community stays supportive, there is potential for the land to be opened up within months, he says. At that point, the council would talk to organisations like Kāinga Ora to gauge support for development, as well as to iwi.

He says the council has not yet formally considered gifting the saleyard land to iwi. “We’re not saying no to that, but it’s still being considered.”

Should the council have been doing more? Manley makes the reasonable point that housing has traditionally been a concern for central government, not councils.

There is a need for housing in the town, but it’s not as simple as just building social housing, he says. He cites tradies looking for trainees. “If you want people to come home into the district, they need houses to live in. And the only choice they have at the moment is going in with others and overcrowding in poor standard housing. So they’re working, or they would be working, and they can afford to pay for accommodation, but even that is not available for them.”

It even affects the council, with lack of accommodation similarly an obstacle for professional staff. “We’ve got to address all those needs.”

In that context, the establishment of a pet food factory in the former freezing works is both a welcome boost in employment and also a potential contributor in the short term to the housing squeeze. The factory, which is in a pilot phase, could ultimately employ up to 100, Manley says. “So we really welcome that opportunity for Taumarunui, and that provides skilled employment for people.”

A large New World supermarket is being built at the north end of the main street, double the size of the one that used to be there, again adding jobs to the town.

Job creation was part of the mahi for Fiona Chase when she came back from Australia. There are limits to the tourism economy under Covid, however.

“We started to do waka river guiding, and so sent our rangatahi over to New Zealand Rafting to be qualified. And then Covid hit.”

But Chase and her wife have also opened a cafe in town, creating nine jobs for which she says they pay above the minimum wage.

Still there are challenges with creating jobs for locals in a town that Riana Brown says has never been short of a work ethic. The problem is, with jobs scarce, benefits have become “the way of money in this area,” she says. “Dependency.”

She sees it at the community garden she established with the Taumarunui Whakaarotahi Trust four years ago in nearby Manunui, where it’s the old people who have joined her doing the work, rather than younger people. It’s been good to utilise the skills of the older ones. “That’s a real good base, but we’re supposed to be giving back to them.”

“We haven’t created opportunities for rangatahi to be able to get that work ethic that we had,” Chase says.

And then there’s the housing squeeze. One of the caravans Chase has provided is for mum, dad and two kids on a whānau section.

“They were living in the house but so is the other sister and her kids, as well as the grandparents in a three-bedroom home. So the only alternative, because they can’t find a home to rent, was to ring me up and see if I had a caravan that I just managed to squeeze into their section. So at least they have somewhere to sleep separately with kids. It’s not ideal.”

Louise Komene, who is among the group talking to the Waikato Times, adds another dimension. “Some people can’t get the housing because of their background, their illness, their mental health.”

Chase thinks older people may have been retiring, buying “the nice little cosy home here”, displacing Māori.

That gets a measure of support from CoreLogic’s analysis. In 2021, 21% of home buyers in the town were first-home buyers, lower than the national average, while investors were 31%, again below the national average, says Davidson – so it’s not a story of investors crowding out newcomers to the market. Existing owner-occupiers were 34% of buyers, above the national average.

What are the solutions? Whatever they are, they’re not easy. Does providing caravans spark the thought of trailer parks as one affordable option, given constraints on speed of building?

But for Chase, this is not only about housing, it’s not only about jobs, it’s not only about the environment. It’s all of it together, a world view.

“I think that the structures and compliance of government and their policies will never allow us, as they are now, to be able to move our people forward. Because Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākehā are so different. We need to be able to look after our own, but how can we look after our own when we have no land?

“Because we all know land is wealth. We can grow, we can build anything if we have the whenua to do it on. But if we don’t have it, we don’t have it.”

She talks about the Waimarino takings, “which is really the Waimarino theft” – 400,000 hectares to build the road and railway line.

Her iwi, Ngāti Hāua, is going through a settlement claim which Chase says will still leave “a pittance”.

“So it’s the actual structure of colonisation that has killed our people and continues to put a stranglehold on them. And the likes of us, we’re the lucky ones, we’re probably the last of the lucky ones to be able to do anything under this current system. The system has to change,” she says. “We have to think of new solutions.”

She has played a modest part in that at a local level, leading opposition to the introduction of two Māori ward seats in a trimmed down council. That wasn’t enough, she successfully argued. This election, there will be three Māori seats and six general. Chase is set to stand for one of them. Now the challenge will be to get disaffected Māori to engage and vote.

Taumarunui on the main trunk line. It’s hard to imagine anyone today writing a popular song for the railway station. Around 2.30pm on Tuesday, there’s not a soul visible on the platform, though the door to the iSite is open and there’s a dash of colour from brightly painted wooden planters. The only train parked on a siding looks like it could have been there for years.

There’s a lot more life across the road at Chase’s cafe, where the coffee and gluten-free caramel slice are as good as any. So are the friendly staff. As closing time approaches the barista by the door is winding down and customers are starting to leave.

Out on the main street, traffic is busy, perhaps a combination of school and work vehicles; it’s too early in the season for tourists to be making much impact.

At the lookout at the top end of town, fantails flit around, as they did earlier at Riana Brown’s garden. Below is the town, divided by the river, divided by income, with many doing it tough. It’s only a trick of time and place, but a rainbow is struggling to break through the cloud.