Calls for regulation on short-stay rentals as Waiheke Island faces housing crisis

There are growing calls for regulation on Waiheke Island to ensure there is affordable rental housing for long-term residents, as increasing numbers of homeowners instead rent their properties to short-stay tourists.

The island in the Hauraki Gulf has the fourth highest homeless population of any local board in the Auckland region, despite having one of the lowest overall populations.

While the number of homeless people per capita is high, over a third of the island’s houses are said to be unoccupied, and overtourism is being blamed.

Dr Pam Oliver, an independent social researcher and long-term Waiheke Island resident, said other popular destinations had effectively mitigated similar issues in recent years without destroying their tourism industry.

“We’re not saying we want tourists all go away. The issue is that there is a massive oversupply of short-stay accommodation and there are places remaining empty all of the time,” she told Checkpoint.

“Communities can’t survive without the ability for people to rent. The survival of the local community [depends on] people’s ability to live somewhere close to where they work.

“It’s a human rights issue and it’s the legislative responsibility of councils to make sure that sufficient housing is available where it’s within their power to make regulations to support that.”

Airbnb and other platforms used by homeowners for short-stay accommodation were often more profitable than long-term rentals.

While this may be the best option for the homeowners, a side effect was large numbers of houses sitting empty for much of the year even as renters struggled to find places to live.

“In 2018 in the last census, 38 percent of Waiheke Island homes were unoccupied and the number has almost certainly risen since then,” Oliver said.

“In April this year, our local newspaper the Gulf News did a review of homes to let on the island that found there were only nine places available for people who wanted long-stay accommodation, and there were 698 Airbnb listings. [The nine] houses that were available weren’t affordable.

“People who’ve relied on rental accommodation for all of their lives and have been living here for decades either have to try and find a place to bunk in with a friend, [but] that doesn’t last forever. Or they move from one so-called winter let to another, where they’re kicked out at the end of the year from their rental accommodation and have to find a place to stay over the summer so it can be rented out to tourists by the owner.”

The modern boom in short-stay accommodation was not an issue Waiheke Island was facing alone.

Various measures have been undertaken in many other areas of the world to manage the impacts of tourism in an effort to protect the local population.

Project Waiheke Forever, a group Oliver is a part of, is urging Auckland Council to act.

“Local governments have been working very effectively to put in regulations like differential rating, where unoccupied houses are rated at a higher level than occupied houses, or putting in limits on the number of nights a home can be rented out for short-stay accommodation so that the owners of those homes are encouraged to put them back into long-stay accommodation,” Oliver said.

“Cities all around the world have been doing that, including in New Zealand. The most recent city to introduce regulation to support long-term stays was Rotorua. Before that, Christchurch did last year. Nelson and all of the state capitals in Australia have also introduced those kinds of regulations, so it’s really Auckland Council’s responsibility.”