Jim Brown, who lives elsewhere in Napier but visits the seafront several days a week, estimates he first noticed the front houses were unoccupied about six months ago.
He has a friend looking for a home and inquired of Kāinga Ora as to what was happening with the homes, and heard nothing other than “we’ll get back to you”.
“They’re a bit older than I would have thought, there’s a plaque saying they were built in 1985,” he said. “But it’s a nice little complex. Most people wouldn’t know they belonged to Kāinga Ora.”
The Waghorne St front of the 10-home village in Ahuriri where the empty Kāinga Ora homes are being prepared for sale. Photo / Doug Laing
In an area mixing cottages well over a century old with modern, two-story seafront homes, some property sales in recent years have been in the $1.5 million to $2 million range.
Meanwhile, numbers of applicants on the Ministry of Social Development’s housing register in need of a home in Napier increased in the quarter to the end of September, the first increase since December 2023. In Hastings, the numbers have decreased, for eight quarters in a row.
In Napier 279 were registered at the end of September, while in Hastings, they totalled 456.
They compared with the March 2022 highs of 801 in Napier and 804 in Hastings.
Nationwide, there were 19,431 registered, the third quarter in a row under 20,000, but having increased from 19,113 at the end of June.
The nationwide peak was 26,868 in March 2022.
Doug Laing is a Hawke’s Bay Today reporter based in Napier, with more than 50 years’ experience covering most aspects of news, including social, housing and community issues.