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People in Queenstown are living in cars, hostels, tents and couch surfing - and the problem is only snowballing, the co-organiser of a housing protest says.
Hannah Sullivan has been living in Queenstown for about seven years and is currently homeless after her landlord told her to vacate their property.
She has been fortunate to be able to live with her neighbour but it was only temporary.
After attending numerous house viewings and making filing applications without success, she approached the Citizens Advice Bureau Queenstown for help.
She was the sixth person to seek help that morning, the person before her had their six-year-old daughter with them.
"When there are families who can't find places and children who are living in cars and tents, that's when the problem becomes something that really needs to be acted on, not just spoken about," Sullivan said.
It prompted her to co-organise a protest on Monday night at the lakefront on Marine Parade to call for action and ask for government officials to step in.
In December, a labour report found the number of rental properties in the Queenstown Lakes district reached its lowest levels since the early stages of the pandemic.
"We just need to look at alternatives. Where can we put people when their houses are being taken away to become an Airbnb ... we need to allow the people who are being displaced to be able to be placed somewhere else."
With rentals in such short supply, she said viewings could have up to 100 people and applications would flood in for a single available room.
Winter was creeping closer and Sullivan was concerned what this would mean for people sleeping in tents or in cars.
MetService has issued a heavy snow watch for the Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago from midnight on Monday until midday on Tuesday.
"I'm really worried about their safety and their health at this point so we want action."
It was also impacting many businesses who could not open the normal hours or days because the housing shortages meant they could not get enough workers and needed to give their staff more breaks.
She planned to keep fighting to get action on the rental housing crisis, saying it would only get worse as more people sought to arrive for the ski season.
Without any support Sullivan said more people would leave Queenstown - she knew some who already had.
