Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust’s (QLCHT) developing 68 homes at a 3.8-hectare Jopp St site it bought from the council in 2022 for $1 — a site that’s worth about $10million.
Out of the 15 homes in stage one, it’s completed six one-bedders along Jopp St that’ll be occupied by seniors on the government’s public housing register — the first household moves in tomorrow.
The other nine, a mix of two- and three-bedders, will be complete by February.
Construction’s also under way on 18 stage-two homes, the third stage of 18 homes will be under way in February/March, and the 17-home fourth stage will be ready in two years’ time.
The homes, ranging up to four-bedders, are being allocated under all of the tenures in QLCHT’s programme — 15 in public housing, five in affordable rentals, four in rent-to-buy and 44 in secure homes.
Under the latter model, you pay for the house but not the land — based on construction costs, the first three-bedders will go for about $477,000, chief executive Julie Scott says.
Her trust provides public housing under contract to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.
Scott explains the government supports all the homes under one of three funds, including a $17m interest-free loan under its progressive home ownership fund.
Local-based project manager Tim Henry, from Devcorp, says the development cost’s about $52m, "though I suspect that’ll go up a little bit just with inflation".
Earthworks were handled by Wilson Contractors, civils by SouthRoads, and Breen Construction’s the main building contractor.
Henry says you typically pay a premium of up to 30% in local construction, but, between QLCHT and Breen, "we’ve been able to keep the cost down reasonably well".
Scott says "we’re fortunate we’ve been working with Breen for 10 years — they have a really good understanding of what we’re delivering".
"We don’t make a whole lot of variations, and we try to have a limited number of house typologies.
"We have a long ongoing supply of work for them, so that helps us negotiate a good construction cost."
She adds residents’ power bills will be low because of ground source heat pumps that have been drilled about 120 metres below ground.
Scott — whose trust has a wait-list of about 1100 Whakatipu households — expects a good percentage of Tewa Banks residents will be Arrowtowners.
QLCHT works on a clear allocation policy, she explains, but if all things were equal between two applicants, they’d favour an Arrowtowner.
Scott says Tewa Banks could help some of those in its Suffolk St development in Arrowtown, which can only be used for rentals, "along the housing continuum into assisted ownership".
