It’s not every day that a mayor and their deputy move and second a motion then find themselves on the losing end of a 2-9 vote, but that’s what happened at council on Wednesday (July 6) when it came to the vote on whether to move forward with a proposal to gift council land in Cromwell and Alexandra to the Central Otago Affordable Housing Trust.

When I say move forward with the proposal, I need to be clear that this meant taking it to a much more detailed and rigorous consultation through the Long Term Plan (LTP), not to gift the land now.

Losing this vote was a big disappointment to me as trying to have some impact on what I see as our housing crisis (which in turn is a big player in our staffing crisis in Central) has been something dear to my heart since even before becoming mayor.  

 I am sure the outcome was even more disappointing to the trustees of the Affordable Housing Trust I settled in 2017, who have worked hard to see their vision come to fruition.  

We owe a debt of gratitude to chair Glen Christiansen and fellow trustees Mary Flannery, Kate Scott and Stephen Brent but sadly now, as Glen put it, the trust is a dead duck.

The discussion around the council table made it clear that for some, it wasn’t so much council not wanting to play a role in affordable housing but the model proposed that was their issue and so I have hope that we can still move in a direction that will assist in this space, despite this set back. 

This issue isn’t going anywhere.