Almost half of the people seeking housing assistance in Rotorua are among the highest-need applicants, with new figures revealing the scale of the district’s ongoing homelessness challenge.
Rotorua Lakes Council endorsed a strategy to “manage, reduce and end” local homelessness on Wednesday.
It came after councillors were presented with data showing hundreds of people were struggling to find secure housing.
The strategy, He Urunga Rau Koromiko 2026, includes actions such as a by-name register to give agencies a clearer picture of who is experiencing homelessness.
Councillors were told that of the 808 households on the waitlist for public housing in Rotorua, 42% had waited three or more years for assistance.
Some 49% of applicants fell into the Ministry of Social Development’s highest-needs category – well above the national figure of 29%.
Homelessness was the main reason 46% of applicants sought housing support.
Ministry of Housing and Urban Development data showed almost a third of households in Rotorua’s Housing First programme had remained there for at least three years without moving into permanent housing.
Police data identified 206 individuals without a home who had come into contact with police over two years.
Mayor Tania Tapsell said the figures reflected the reality behind Rotorua’s homelessness crisis, including the widespread use of emergency housing motels and people sleeping rough in recent years.
“Behind those numbers are people,” she said.
“We’ve learned there have been gaps in many different areas of the system and support that was supposed to help them.”
Tapsell said no single organisation could solve homelessness alone and the council’s role was to bring different groups together to improve the response.
The new strategy aimed to shift the focus from responding to homelessness after it happens to preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place.
Council principal adviser Peniel Elliott said homelessness included people living in motels, overcrowded homes, garages, sheds or unsafe housing, as well as those sleeping rough.
“We need to understand where those gaps are, where people are falling through the system, and what we can do collectively to stop that happening,” she said.
The strategy was developed with government agencies, community organisations, health and education providers, businesses and people with lived experience of homelessness.
Wednesday’s decision did not include any new council funding.
The work would initially be delivered through existing budgets, with external funding opportunities to be explored. Any future funding requests would go through the Long-term Plan process.
Councillor Karen Barker questioned whether the council’s leadership role risked creating an expectation that homelessness was primarily a council responsibility rather than a central government issue.
Tapsell said residents already expected council to play a role, but the response needed to involve multiple agencies.
She said one of the most important measures of success would be reducing the number of people under 25 experiencing severe housing deprivation.
Children and young people experience homelessness at higher rates than any other age group in New Zealand, with the 2023 Census finding almost half of all people experiencing homelessness are aged under 25.
“That has been the real heartbreaking learning through this journey,” Tapsell said.
“It is the age at which most people first experience homelessness and to know that’s happening in our city really emphasised the need for us working together.”
Te Taumata o Ngāti Whakaue housing manager Jordan Robertson welcomed the strategy’s recognition that Māori were disproportionately affected by homelessness and severe housing deprivation.
“It is good to see the framework acknowledge this and the need for iwi-led and kaupapa Māori organisations to play a leading role in the implementation,” he said.
Regular reporting is expected, with work underway on a publicly accessible dashboard that will track progress against key measures.
These would include reducing the number of people who become homeless, improving housing supply, strengthening data collection and reducing the number of young people under 25 experiencing severe housing deprivation.
Tapsell said the goal was not simply to respond to homelessness when it became visible, but to prevent more people from reaching crisis point.
She said the true measure of success would be whether fewer people ended up without a secure place to live.
“We want to see very significant improvements within one to two years,” she said.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
