Struggling to find a home in Invercargill

Sunday, 23 August 2020

Leona McLean has been searching for a rental in Invercargill for more than six months.

Leona McLean’s voice breaks when she describes the rough year she has had trying to find a rental home in Invercargill.

She has been searching for six months and she never knew how tough it would be to find a roof to put over her head.

McLean, along with others, could be described as the new face of “houselessness” in Invercargill where people are struggling to get accepted by landlords and rental agencies, who are now getting a lot pickier since the new Residential Tenancy Amendment Act came into force on August 6.

There are Southlanders with pets who can’t get accepted, elderly people renting who can't afford homes and are struggling as rents go up, and then there are people like McLean who have a conviction from years ago and simply do not get considered.

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Invercargill for the past five years has experienced a housing shortage but a hidden demographic of people is surfacing who struggle to find a place to live.

A high uptake of the Welcome Home Loans, people using their KiwiSaver to buy their first houses, high investment portfolios and now the tighter legislation has compounded the housing shortage even further.

The law changes mean property managers and landlords will likely scrutinise potential tenants far more because the 90-day no-cause termination clause has been removed.

For now, McLean is staying with friends. Prior to that she was living in a bus after winning a Tenancy Hearing Dispute in February 2020 where mould and mushrooms had been growing on the carpet of the house she used to rent.

While acknowledging she had a conviction from years ago, it had never been mentioned as an issue with real estate agents, she said.

One offer was outside her price range of $250 a week.

The most likely reason she cannot find a property is because of a housing shortage but she does wonder if she has been blacklisted because of the tenancy dispute.

Data from Tenancy Services shows the average rent in Southland as at July 1 has increased every year since 2015 and is currently at its highest –$315.

However, viewing rentals in Invercargill on Trade Me and various real estate listings puts the bulk of properties for a three-bedroom house between $372.50 and $480 per week.

Housing and Urban Development figures for Invercargill for the month of June show there are 30 transitional housing places in Invercargill. This is accommodation meant for short-term stays of up to three months before people find something permanent.

There were 145 applicants on the housing register in Invercargill between March and June.

But as a result of the squeeze on housing, people are staying in transitional housing for months longer than expected.

Work and Income figures show more people need the accommodation supplement in Invercargill, with 4047 on it in July 2019 going up to 4443 in July 2020.

Southland Real Estate general manager Greame Hegan said that before the Covid-19 pandemic there was a rental shortage and there were between 20 and 30 people looking at the same property.

It improved after lockdown but now landlords were concerned about the Residential Tenancy Amendment Act which would make it difficult to evict tenants, he said.

“Landlords are selling up because they don’t want the headache.”

Southland Real Estate property manager Margaret Reynolds said it would have to be extra careful when approving tenants and people would need good references and credit ratings.

She believed there would be a lot of people staying in motels and in government housing as a result.

Anecdotally, Harcourts Invercargill manager Wayne Ellis said, it was tough for people looking for cheaper housing and rentals for less than $400 per week were going particularly quickly.

Salvation Army Invercargill Corps lieutenant Gavin Rivett said a shortage of houses would definitely be affecting people on lower incomes or who had marks against them such as debt or convictions.

The Salvation Army has transitional housing for 10 individuals and seven families in Invercargill.

Transitional housing was meant to be for a period of less than three months but there were already people staying longer, he said.

Habitat for Humanity has a network of private landlords it deals with in Invercargill who work with tenants who are often not picked up by landlords who go through real estate companies.

Invercargill Habitat for Humanity general manager Paul Searancke said: “It is quite scary really, if you think about there were over 200 people on a waiting list for a house at Winz.”

Being a pet owner is also making it tough for people to find a rental in Invercargill.

Leah Kennard, 45, has been looking to move into a rental with a friend since January but has found it a struggle to find a place that allows dogs.

Leah Kennard, 45, has been looking for a month.

“I know there are people that are in worse situations, so I am grateful for what I have, but as an adult you know you are entitled to have a place to call home. I just don’t know why it is so tough.”

Kennard has been looking for a place to rent with a friend since January but they both own dogs.

From the 20 rentals she looked at, only three were pet friendly, and they had to compete with a high number of other people applying, she said.

Kennard has been living with family members. During the Covid-19 lockdown there were nine people living in the house, she said.

Community Housing Action Group chairwoman Margaret Cook said it had been struggling to get data on how the Residential Tenancy Amendment Act and the lack of rentals would affect community housing in Invercargill.

Simply, there were not enough rentals and when a landlord had 30 to 40 people looking at a property, they could be selective, she said.

People needed to move from emergency housing into transitional housing and that was where there was a shortage, she said.

According Housing and Urban Development figures, 348 applications were made for emergency housing grants in Invercargill for June at a cost of $472,427.

What is the solution for Invercargill?

Rivett believes one solution is to help people solve the issues that make it difficult to find a home.

If someone had a bad credit rating, it would be finding them financial support; if someone had a criminal history it would become more difficult but they could put support networks in place to create ease with landlords, Rivett said.

He believed the issue of houselessness was not just the responsibility of the Government but within the community as a whole.

The community would have to open up to give these people a chance and neighbours should work collectively if people did have underlying issue, he said.

Searancke is unsure yet how Habitat for Humanity might be able to help people with the additional pressures brought by the tenancy amendment but it could mean it had to lease properties itself.

The amendment was still fairly new and the organisation needed to time to look at how it could deal with it with the limited resources it had, he said.

Habitat for Humanity is behind a project at Kew Bowl in Invercargill which will develop 38 community houses supplying a mixture of rentals, social rentals, private ownership and progressive ownership houses such as a Kiwibuy model.

It would be able to adapt the plan to include more rentals or social rentals but it would not be building every house in the project with funding limited, Searancke said.