Dawn is breaking on Onetangi Beach, unveiling the darker side of the island paradise of Waiheke in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.
Rows of cars and vans are parked; many full of sleeping people and further inland at the Onetangi Sports park are more cars and vans.
Some, but not all, have chosen this nomadic lifestyle. The rest are a mixture of low-income workers and beneficiaries who simply have no other choice; as the housing crisis on the island has reached its peak.
One man, a local labourer who did not want to be named, had been living in his van since Christmas. He said the price of rentals were beyond what he could afford.
Moving off the island is not an option. His job is here.
Another man, aged 58, was at the park to use the water and toilet facilities. His home, a motorhome, that he has parked in a friend’s industrial yard.
The roughly $300 he gets as a beneficiary is not enough to pay for a home to call his own.
“The future is pretty bleak,” he tells 1News. “People say you are on the dole, you are living this lifestyle.
“What lifestyle? It’s not a good way to live.”
He wants work, but says his body is no longer capable of doing the physical work he was used to doing. There were, he says, few other options.
“There’s not many places for a single guy to go to, I’m not rich, I haven’t got assets.”
Things were not always this hard on the island; but as property became a hot asset nationwide and the tourism market transformed many houses into holiday homes - affordable options became scarce.
And locals who have always called the island home, are finding things tougher every year.
One solo-mother, who did not want to be identified, feared for the future of her 15-year-old son.
“I have grown up here, my family has been here since 1967,” she says. “It’s home.”
But the part-time hospitality worker says the prices were driving the locals away and it had become “a millionaire’s paradise”.
She has found herself moving almost every year. At the end of 2019 the only option was a caravan - she was unable to find a home till late the following year.
“It’s demeaning, it’s soul destroying, when you get settled somewhere to be told you have to leave.”
The woman, who works part-time in hospitality, says it was hard not being able to provide the stable home for her son that she had growing up.
“When he was five or six, it happened a couple of times, and he was like ‘mum is santa going to be able to find us? Because we have to move again’.”
While her son has gotten attune to the constant moving she says it is “sad. I want an actual home for my boy.”
Amelia Lawley is a budgeting advisor on Waiheke Island. She says in the last nine years she has worked in the role she has seen people spend a growing proportion of their salary on rent.
Where once people paid 40 per cent of their income; she said many were now paying up to 80 per cent.
“The first thing to go is always food,” she says. “To me secure and stable and appropriate housing is at the heart of wellbeing for a family, not just a family, anybody.”
Tenancy Services data shows a three-bedroom on Waiheke costs up to 680 a week.
But in reality rental listings show the figures are much higher – in excess of $750 a week.
That’s if there’s anything available in the first place - most listings show only a handful of homes available for rent at any given time.
Cath Handley, from the Waiheke Local Board, says with Covid the return of many Kiwis to the island has added to the pressure.
Last year, she took in a woman in her fifties who was unable to find a home. “She had gone to around three different places...it has taken her most of the year to find what she was after - somewhere where she could live and rent.”
For some the only answer was to move offshore. Auckland businessman Stephen Baker earns a decent salary, but says there simply weren’t any affordable options even for him.
He’s left the island… and is now living in a friend’s spare room.
He’s found himself “homeless” after the owners of his rental property came back from Argentina after the pandemic deepened.
“It's pretty hard moving from Waiheke, I've got a good base of friends over there, I've got my children who still live on Waiheke...so not seeing them as often as I used to is going to be difficult.”
One of his great regrets is selling a house he once owned on Waiheke for just under $400,000 a decade a go.
“That would easily be going for $900,000 plus now on Waiheke... I just can't get back into the property market in Auckland... and I know I'm not alone.”
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