Harsh reality check for new Ashburtonians

By Sue Newman February 6, 2012

For Seth Tavendale, the shortage of accommodation in Ashburton was a harsh reality check after the excitement of the birth of his son and a new job in Ashburton.

Mr Tavendale is one of a team of five new employees Ashburton Contracting Ltd (ACL) has secured to deal with its increasing workload, but those five new employees and their families meant five extra rental houses were needed out of Ashburton's non-existent rental pool.
When he applied for his job in November, Mr Tavendale checked out rental accommodation in Ashburton, found a few he liked among the 38 on the market and assumed when he arrived in the new year he would find a house fairly quickly.
He was wrong and so were the other four new ACL employees.
Mr Tavendale is one of the lucky ones.
He has finally found a property and will move in at the weekend, but he's staggered that he's paying $320 a week for a property similar to the one he had been renting in Palmerston North for $260.
"It's shocking down here.
"There's absolutely nothing on the market.
"We've all got families and while two of us have got houses now the rest haven't."
Their employer is paying for his homeless staff to live at Coronation Park while he helps them find accommodation.
"The company has been really good about this, they've helped us a lot and we're really grateful for that."
The delay in finding a house, however, has meant his wife and newborn son have had to move in, temporarily, with her parents in Wellington.
ACL chief executive Gary Casey said that when he employed extra staff he had no idea that finding them accommodation would be so difficult.
"We're slowly working through this.
"They're all specialist staff we needed, but I never realised just how dire accommodation in Ashburton really was and I've now heard other employers are struggling with this too," he said.
"It's been a bloody battle.
"Every time something comes up, you want your people to have a look first but by the time you get there it can be gone."
Mr Casey said his workload had expanded about 25 per cent in the past few months and while he had one crew working in Christchurch on earthquake rebuild work, he had five years of work in the city available if he was able to find the right staff.
And it is the same for CMP chief executive Graham Parker. His company can have up to 60 new staff moving into the district each season, many of those are families planning to stay long-term.

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