New Plymouth’s Marfell housing project overdue

DAVID BURROUGHS – Taranaki Daily News 

The Marfell housing project it overdue and needs to be sorted urgently, Labour says.

Labour spokesperson for social development Carmel Sepuloni talked with a number of key stakeholders in New Plymouth’s social welfare section on Thursday and said it was time for something to happen in the area.

“I did see Jonathan Young said it was time for progress in Marfell,” she said.

“Well it’s eight years ago that development was promised. It’s overdue, it’s not time for progress. Progress is way overdue.”

She said she would be looking to ask questions of Housing New Zealand about the state of the project.

“Often the way to prompt the government into action is to ask some really hard questions through official information act requests, because once you get all of the information required, once you make that information public, that can often affect them to shift into gear,” she said.

In 2008 a multi-million dollar project was promised for the area with plans drawn up to create reserves and improve roading.

 

A further 20 tenants were told to vacate their houses in 2012 but the entire plan was scrapped in 2014 due to the cost of the project, leaving about 30 houses sitting empty.

Sepuloni said housing featured heavily in the discussions she had while in New Plymouth, as well as the waiting times between switching onto benefits and the pressure food banks are under.

One of the issues was the fact students had to wait a week without money in between switching from a student loan to a benefit.

 

“They can’t save money to make up that one weeks rent,” she said.

“If you’re already on minimum wage, how are you going to save to cover rent, how are you going to buy food?”

 – Taranaki Daily News