Plans to build 4905 three-storey townhouses and apartments, including social housing, in Ōmokoroa have sent ripples through the sleepy coastal settlement.

The housing intensification plan in suburbs across Aotearoa was introduced in 2021 to increase housing supply, but homeowners had expressed concerns about losing their view, sun and suburb’s character.

Ōmokoroa resident, Bruce McCabe, who chairs the village’s rates and residence association, says many people were worried about losing the Bay of Plenty spot’s character and feel they had not been consulted.

“There hasn’t been much opportunity for locals to give feedback, because before it was going to be the law so there was nothing we could do.

“A lot of us are also really concerned about traffic - it’s going to clog up roads in town and there’s no parking for almost 5000 new houses - imagine how many cars that is going to add around town.

“Then getting into Tauranga which is already the region’s biggest jams on State Highway Two.”

Councillor Margaret Murray Benge says the plan was immoral and the sections were too small.

”Social planning of the very worst kind. The antisocial environment that we will be creating by having these tiny, tiny little sections where you cannot swing a cat. I think is just immoral.”

It was “totally reckless”, councillor Don Thwaites says.

Their objections were aired in a meeting about the plan in February, but last week councillors accepted it, albeit reluctantly, saying they were “between a rock and hard place”, another felt it was like “swallowing a rat”.

New government rules allow three buildings up to 11 metres high on one section without resource consent.

Homes can be close as 1.5m on the front boundary and 1m on the sides and rear.

Two Bay of Plenty towns, Ōmokoroa and Te Puke, had been selected for greater housing intensification to accommodate more people.

Western Bay of Plenty is one of the fastest growing provincial districts, with population projected to increase by up to 20000 more people by 2050.

The Labour Government had made housing density rules mandatory.

The new Government allows councils to make the choice.

Murray-Benge says her preference would have been to table the plan and take it back to the ministers of housing and social housing.

This would risk loss of Government funding already put into the plan, including $47 million from Kainga Ora.

This funding was targeted to allow road upgrades to enable land in Ōmokoroa to be opened up for housing, which was needed in the Bay of Plenty which has a housing shortage, making it one of the country’s most expensive places to live.

The intensification plan was accepted on March 6, with councillors still worried about the proposal.

“Today we have to swallow a dead rat, it’s just a question of which rodent we choose.” says Rodney Joyce.

They had been left with an impossible choice - either reject the “pretty awful planning rules” and risk losing the funding for upgrades, or agree to them and just hope the “damage” was not too much, he says.

They were “basically between a rock and a hard place” and didn’t really have any choice in the matter, says another councillor, Anne Henry.

- Annemarie Quill/ Stuff