I am confident progress is being made towards addressing the current emergency housing situation in Rotorua.

I had a very positive meeting in Wellington yesterday [13 September] with Housing Minister Megan Woods and MSD Minister Carmel Sepuloni and I can assure the community that we do have the attention of the Government and its agencies and there is an appreciation of Rotorua’s issues and the need for change.

I will continue to use every opportunity to reinforce and be emphatic about the need for urgent measures to improve the current situation, an end to the intensification of emergency accommodation on Fenton Street and for public safety to be a priority.

The community can be confident that we are working together to see an end to the current emergency housing in Rotorua.

For its part, the council is working very hard to get the changes we need. We want an end to mixed use of motels and better management of MSD clients in motels. We need to see a change in the referral system to ensure people are only going to places that are safe and are appropriately located – and that means not all down Fenton Street.

There is agreement regarding the active management of those coming to Rotorua from elsewhere and I understand there has been a recent drop of about 10 per cent in the total number of people in emergency housing here.

We know it will take time to build more houses so we need to ensure that emergency accommodation in the interim is safe, appropriate, well managed and dispersed rather than concentrated in one place.

We also need to know that there will be an end to the situation we currently have and we are working towards achieving that.

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