Housing costs driving teachers, aged care nurses away from cities that need them

Friday, 13 August 2021

Rori Baird, an Auckland primary school teacher and one of many key workers daunted by the cost of housing near their jobs.

New primary teacher Rori Baird knows how lucky she is to have a house close to where she works.

But moving out of her five-person flat into something more smaller or even her own would be so costly, she can’t even begin to contemplate it.

She considered leaving town but found a job easily.

“There was more demand for teachers, especially beginning teachers, and I do believe that is because people with families can’t afford to buy in Auckland.”

The Treasury is predicting a sharp slowdown in house price growth, but the only people who appear to be thriving at the moment are those already on the property ladder.

* Sorry, homeowners: prices must fall

* The precarious lives of teacher aides: 'I don't know if I'll have a job next year'

* Nurses' and teachers' salaries crunched by the rising cost of living - and housing in particular

Nurses are leaving not-for-profit rest homes for better pay and costs of living elsewhere.

For some of Baird’s colleagues, staying in the city is much tougher. One commutes to south Auckland from Mt Albert.

“A close friend of mine is considering leaving Auckland because the housing is just not achievable for any of us.”

Key workers – often on low pay – are facing huge difficulties finding affordable accommodation and that’s a problem for highly priced cities like Auckland or Wellington.

But it’s also a problem for smaller towns like Whanganui and provincial centres where the price rises have spread.

There are currently 900 vacancies for aged care nurses around the country and 186 for primary or area school teachers.

And in the not-for-profit aged care sector, nurses are avoiding or leaving certain centres in droves.

Nikki Hurst, executive director of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services, says 860 registered nurses have resigned from the state-funded sector since March.

She says a large portion have been lured to district health boards for better pay and often cheaper living costs, or more points on residency applications.

Things are not perfect in some provinces, either. In Thames, nurses are so scarce that two rest homes have been sharing one registered nurse between them, instead of ideally having three each.

Marlborough teacher Dan Stephens bought his first house in June on his 12th attempt. That month houses in Blenheim hit a record median price of $705,000, up from $452,000 a year earlier.

In Whanganui, nurses have been starting roles and then leaving.

“Our understanding is it’s very strongly tied to inability to access housing, let alone affordable housing,” Hurst said.

“We’ve got a care facility in Karori [in Wellington] that it’s just about impossible to place anyone in because nobody can live anywhere near it.”

It’s not the case everywhere, Hurst agrees. Parts of the South Island are fine. But in others, rest homes are starting to close beds or turn away new admissions, and closures are becoming a real possibility.

Nurses incomes have failed to keep pace with the cost of housing and transport, Hurst says.

Liam Rutherford: A vacuum is developing in big city schools as the teacher shortage wears on.

“Previously maybe you didn't live in Karori but you could live in Wilton and then it was just a walk or a bus.

“Now you're having to live in Upper Hutt … and facing a really long commute, and it becomes a false economy thing.”

Teachers are also being deterred from areas with high housing costs.

The latest figures from the Education Gazette show that in July the country was short 880 vacancies across the entire school sector, including teacher aides.

Primary teacher Andy Mackay recently moved from Wellington to Napier when he and wife Jo, learned they were about to become parents.

They’d been content in their one-bedroom rental but anything bigger was unaffordable.

“I’d literally just been given a permanent job at the school I’d been working at for three years which I was really happy with, great school, but I had to hand my notice in because, we can’t make it here in Wellington.”

They bought in Napier just before prices went up.

“I’m really lucky to have a job up here and yeah, there’s a number of teachers I know in the same position who have left the cities to go to the regions,” Mackay says.

“But now it’s like, what about all these new teachers who are from the regions who are getting pushed out by the teachers that are leaving the cities? Where do they go? It's pretty concerning.”

Liam Rutherford, president of the primary teachers union NZEI, says that increasingly teachers who are more established in life have been shifting to the provinces.

“What this means is it’s creating a vacuum in Auckland where you're seeing younger and younger teachers moving into leadership positions.”

Overseas teachers are applying but Rutherford says they are not always ready to “hit the ground running”.

“Ten years ago, a principal could put out a job description and have 20 or 30 applicants coming through and have real confidence they were getting somebody with the right skills set they needed.”

Back in Napier, where the median Hawke’s Bay house is now $730,000, Mackay says he worries that the provinces may have now priced themselves out of reach for the new recruits when a wave of retiring teachers hits.

“And once the borders open, we are going to lose so many teachers overseas.”

No political party seems to be addressing the issue, he says.

“The way I look at things, it's pretty messed up.”