- Our ageing population impacting on our city’s and the surrounding district’s economic growth.
- Struggling infrastructure be it pipes or roads.
- Climate change impacts on South Dunedin and south Mosgiel, our stormwater and flood protections, and insurers’ willingness to cover affected areas.
- Massive change programmes out of Wellington with indefinite or already off-track timetables.
- Dunedin’s financially and mentally strapped ratepayers needing a breather.
In social services, these pressures are also on their way:
- A decline in school children and softening enrolments in Dunedin early childhood education.
- Significant increases in the number of young people struggling with mental health issues after the initial Covid years.
- Much needed but still ugly realignment of Government funding along with wage pressures and workforce shortages.
- An inbound housing shortage as rentals in South Dunedin will begin failing healthy homes standards (hard to keep warm and dry when the water table is lapping at the piles).
- Massive change programmes out of Wellington in health and vocational education, with indefinite or already off-track timetables.
- A financially strapped main funder (Government).
Resiliency, that thing that enables us to weather the grind or sudden shocks, comes from our sense of connection with those around us, our ability to lean on each other. It’s the invisible strength of being a community that comes together when times are tough.
We might be a bit low on that right now, but the new council has a chance to help. Happily, the recipe for building social cohesion is pretty simple:
- Focus on inclusion — make sure everyone’s getting heard using social cohesion measures or benchmarks like the Scanlon-Monash Index.
- Recognise the various communities within Dunedin city as equal partners with expertise and valuable experiences, this is more than holding hearings, this is about ongoing strategic commitments.
- Be open about what’s working and what’s not.
Rinse and repeat.
If you would like to support the Mission’s work with a donation, please visit givealittle.co.nz and search for The Methodist Mission.
