As someone exposed to stories of hardship on a daily basis, Vanessa Hammond says she sometimes sees life in Wanaka differently from others.

Vanessa is a public health researcher with a unique perspective on the Upper Clutha community from her seven years conducting local health and social research.

Digging deeper into hard topics like mental health, alcohol abuse, and housing hardship is important, Vanessa says, because information about the challenges people face in our community helps organisations to advocate for the most vulnerable.

Vanessa, who was raised in Canterbury, completed an MA in public health from the University of Otago before applying her research skills to studying didymo. She earned a PhD in freshwater ecology, but decided public health was her real interest, and embarked on an academic career in the discipline.

Vanessa was doing well and publishing her work when she attended a seminar on women academics. She didn’t like the stories she heard about long hours and little family time. Reconsidering her career choice coincided with a move to Wanaka with her husband and two young children in 2011.

Vanessa started working as a public health analyst for the Southern District Health Board (SDHB) the same year, and now her work revolves around the SDHB and her work as a consultant for the Wanaka Alcohol Group (WAG) and Wanaka Community Networks.

All her work feeds into establishing a longitudinal evidence base (a research design that involves repeated observations of the same issues) in the Upper Clutha community that agencies can use to advocate for their clients.

WAG’s vision is for a longitudinal survey, which Vanessa says “is pretty amazing”. So far Vanessa has undertaken an initial survey of Mount Aspiring College students in 2016, repeated in 2018. Another researcher surveyed parents in 2017, and Vanessa will repeat that survey next month.

“That’s a really important survey, because you get only half the story by surveying students,” she said. “Alcohol is so normal in Wanaka and Queenstown, and we have a sense that parents have a lot of peer pressure.”

“The problem with studying alcohol in general is everyone drinks, no one thinks they’ve got a problem, so everyone’s on the defensive,” she said, adding that the public health challenge is “shifting the mean” of drinking behaviour through changing attitudes. WAG is doing its bit by promoting alcohol-free events and health education work with students and parents.

Vanessa is also working with Community Networks to create a ‘social services snapshot’ of the community. The snapshots will be compiled every six months: the baseline survey was undertaken in February, and the next will be in August. The survey involves seeking information from “key informants” - 45 social service organisations. Repeating the snapshot every six months will allow Community Networks to track progress, monitor trends, and identify emerging issues.

“In the last snapshot the real standout was poor mental health and lack of mental health services,” Vanessa said, 

The snapshot shows the most common issues faced by clients of social services were poor mental health, financial hardship, social/relationship/family problems and lack of affordable housing. It reflects the hundreds of people who use social services here each month.

“For some people it’s really hard to be here,” she said. “There’s a national trend all the social services are talking about: an increase in complexity of needs. People used to present with one or two issues; now people have so many problems, it’s hard to help them.”

Vanessa said her networks agree the problems have been present for about 15 years; they have been exacerbated in the past five years, and even more so in the past year.

“I think we’ve all become more vulnerable,” she said, citing increasing housing costs, increased personal debt, and worsening employment conditions.

This year alone, services have seen more people accessing their KiwiSaver to pay their bills than they’ve seen in the past two years, she said.

“What I hear from my work are constant stories like that.”

Her current project for the SDHB is a housing survey - a qualitative project drawing on the insights of 25 key informants including police, government and non-government agencies, and schools.

Vanessa has just completed a housing survey for Central Otago and is about to start surveying Queenstown Lakes.

What she learned from the Central Otago survey was “humbling and disturbing”, she said, and she expects Wanaka’s situation to be “similar in seriousness but different in their nature”.

The district’s housing shortage affects people’s financial and mental health, children’s performance at school, and much more.

“The biggest impact is on mental health. People are living in hardship because they’re prioritising their rent,” she said.

Working more to survive financially means less time at home - “a massive loss of quality of life”.

“People come for the lifestyle and all they get is the view,” she said.

To those who say “if you can’t afford to live here, move away,” Vanessa says: “We should be working on having equitable and inclusive communities.”

Housing is a top priority, she says. “What we need is really warm, well-designed, climate-proof homes so we don’t end up with an air pollution problem. Housing should be a pillar of economic strategy. We need to think about strong housing policies, including at a council level.”

And after more than seven years researching our social issues, Vanessa believes people in the Upper Clutha need to accept growth - as long as it’s managed well.

“For my own well being I had to make peace with development, otherwise I’d be frustrated all the time,” she said.

“We’ve reached a ceiling for what we can currently sustain. When we get our new supermarket and roundabout etc it will improve. But people need to accept that we have a housing problem, and for the community to be sustainable we need more housing, and different types of housing.”

The usual understanding of homelessness is people living in public places, and that’s happening in Cromwell and Alexandra, she said, as well as “people living in garages with their kids”.

Overcrowding and “hot bedding” (where multiple tenants share beds or bedrooms in shifts) are also issues Vanessa expects to find here. She already knows there are “a lot of people living in vans at their workplaces in Wanaka”.

From her perspective “at the sharp end of the stick” it’s important for Vanessa to make the effort to take time out.

Just looking at her “happy, healthy children” helps her maintain perspective and balance, as well as family hiking and “stacks of yoga”.

Contact Community Networks to read the full baseline Upper Clutha Social Services Snapshot.

PHOTO: Supplied