Published on 13th of September, 2025
CMM housing services in Te Tau Ihu (top of the South Island) continue to help accommodate the region’s most vulnerable amid a chronic shortage of single bedroom housing, rising cost of living and preferential housing for seasonal workers.
Over the last year, CMM has seen a steady increase in single people over 60 living in emergency and transitional housing and needing CMM support.
“Sometimes a property with a tenant who’s over 65 and been renting there for years will go on the market and a new owner puts rent up which the tenant can’t afford,” CMM Marlborough, Nelson and West Coast manager Vanya Vitasovich says.
Older people then find themselves in the “heart-breaking” situation of living in emergency housing. Developers won’t build one-bed units because the return on a two-bedroom unit is greater and Kāinga Ora is ending its building programme. The local council has only 60 pensioner units.
Over 92% of the 195 applicants for housing in Marlborough on the Government’s housing register urgently need housing. Nearly 66% of applicants need a single bedroom home. Much accommodation in Blenheim goes to seasonal workers, exacerbating the already short supply of houses.
Last August, CMM started housing single people, mainly kaumātua, who had been living in emergency housing in its 16-unit Brydan transitional housing complex, in response to stricter Government rules for people seeking emergency housing. The complex housed mainly single parents with children, which CMM tries to house in larger houses.
Vanya says the team has seen great success in being able to house a wide range of people, including tenants who had been living in less than ideal conditions, such as holiday parks.
“We work alongside clients to realise their goals, such as addressing addiction, getting a job or turning their lives around to the point where they no longer require our support.”
The Government changes also saw increased demand for CMM’s Housing First Blenheim services, which supports well over the contracted 60 kaewa. It recently celebrated the housing of over 100 kaewa since the service began in 2018.
Demand on CMM’s Blenheim advocacy service, which had only started a year earlier, almost tripled in the year to August 2024. The service is a single point of entry for all CMM services. Since it began, over 130 whānau have benefitted. In May, CMM extended its advocacy by joining forces with other community organisations to hold the second annual open day to support hauora and harm reduction within the community.
