Waiheke Community Housing Trust’s Damian Sycamore says many residents are hanging on by their fingernails searching for suitable homes while more than a third of all houses sat empty on 2023 census night. Photo Paul Mitchell

The 2023 census shows the island has one of the country’s lowest rates of occupancy of its existing houses.

The 2023 census shows only 61.5 percent of Waiheke’s 6366 dwellings were occupied on census night last March. And out of the nearly 40 percent of unoccupied dwellings, 804 were deemed empty – so 13 percent of all Waiheke houses had nobody living in them at all.

Dwellings were classified as unoccupied if the residents weren’t home on census night for any reason, including where there were new occupants who expected to move in before that. Unoccupied dwellings were categorised as ‘Residents Away’ if said residents weren’t expecting to return by the day after census night – and these accounted for a quarter of all Waiheke dwellings.

• Paul Mitchell

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