Wake Up Babe, New Council Housing Just Dropped

…except it’s not the type of housing that Wellingtonians were hoping for.

Wellington City Council (WCC) have completed the latest installment of Te Kāinga affordable rental programme, a development consisting of three different apartment buildings on Willis Street. Combined, the buildings house a total of 178 two or three bedroom apartments, but the price tag has raised eyebrows. 

The two bedroom apartments advertised on the Te Kāinga website range between $621 per week to a steep $770 p/w. Three bedroom apartments aren't much better, sitting at $803 p/w for certain buildings. 

As of March this year, the average cost of rent in Wellington central is between $600 and $800 per week for a two bedroom apartment. Te Kāinga development rentals match these figures.

One disgruntled Twitter user wrote, “I live in a backpackers. If by some miracle I get to move to Te Kāinga apartments, it will be circa 40% of my weekly income.”

The WCC outlines the target demographic for tenants on the official Te Kāinga website as  “people on incomes under $95,000 for an individual and $150,000 for a couple or family and who are not eligible for income related rent”, and people who are not homeowners. Workers in the arts, hospitality, tourism, and the public sectors are listed as priority tenants. Although the prices are high for the targeted tenants, Eimhim O’Shea, a representative of Renters United, affirms that “building these high-density homes is a net positive”. 

“My understanding of that project is [it is] aimed at yo-pros who are working people [and] who do have that higher level of income. I think that the idea is by increasing supply [it will] help reduce the cost of other housing,” he explains. “I'm far more concerned with private rentals, which are of far worse quality, charging the same or even greater prices, [and] exploiting the undersupply of housing.”

Although O’Shea says that even though “the prices aren't accessible to a huge part of our community, which is super unfortunate”, the WCC as a whole is doing “pretty well”.