Manurewa - how did it go downhill?

[AMR]

I have read a few posts here which suggest that Manurewa used to be a nice suburb years ago.

What were the specific triggers that caused it to turn into such a slum today?

[Oops...wrong section! Could someone move this?]

[Davo36]

I grew up in Manurewa. I'll answer it.

Yes Manurewa was quite a nice up to date suburb when I was growing up. I saw the shops, schools, council facilities, everything go downhill over the time I lived there. It's now basically a slum with a few nice areas.

So what happened? Well it's hard to answer that without sounding like a complete racist. Basically the demographics of the area changed. It used to be all white middle class families with a sprinkling of Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Asians and others mixed in.

In the 70s the immigration borders were opened up to the PIs and a lot of them chose to settle in the cheaper areas of South Auckland. A lot of cheap housing was built in places like Clendon where many poorer people settled.

At the same time, inner city suburbs were being done up and many Maori and other lower socio economic groups got forced out by the richer whities. Where did they go? South Auckland of course. And so that was all parts of South Auckland including Manurewa.

What was also happening was the increase of the welfare state - meaning the dole was to become a well respected way of life for many people. Whole families, single mums with too many kids and all that kind of stuff. All subsidised by you and I, the taxpayer.

The changes over the 1980's only made some things worse because the lower waged got made unemployed (they didn't have the soft dead end jobs like the railways or the freezing works any more and so had to go on the dole) and people with time on their hands create trouble IMHO.

The next thing to happen was the white flight. From the schools and the area as a whole. When your local high school is populated with very low socio economic kids who grow up in houses where everyone's drinking and drugging and committing crime is a way of life, then you don't want to send your kid there to learn all that, get beaten up regularly etc.

So the white middle class families either moved out totally or moved to the fringes like Hill Park, Totara Heights, Alfriston etc. and sent there kids to school in Auckland or perhaps to Kings or Sacred Heart.

The other part of the town that really suffered was the CBD. Manurewa used to have it's own council but got merged into Manukau. So then Manurewa got a lot less money spent on it and went further downhill.

Also, Southmall, the local mall which used to be as good as anywhere, got split up into strata titles. This meant there were now 26 owners trying to run a mall they should have 1 clear direction at all times. So nothing could be agreed and it all went downhill very fast. Property owners lost most of the value of their properties. And if you have a mall which is not being run well, with a population that is bascially going downhill as well, you have a disaster. The Manurewa CBD is now very rough. I wouldn't go there and walk around after dark.

And of course all of this is a real shame. Manurewa used to be so nice but the idiots are running the asylum now and have been for some time. I wouldn't own property there for love nor money now. I feel sorry for my home town but what can be done? Probably nothing while we have such a welfarist state and keep importing the wrong people into the country, and continue to be very soft on law and order.

David

[eri]

i spent the first 5 years of life there and even after we moved my father had a shop in the cbd for another 10 years where i used to work in after school

used to enjoy wandering around southmall during my break

don't anymore

what happened?

demographics changed completely, basically as David said

can't find my copy of that auckland suburban guide but if you were to find the page showing the % of each cultural group in each suburb

cover up the names of the suburbs and then by looking at the cultural mix try to work out which suburbs faced the most "challenges" and which the least you might find, as i did, remuera at 1 extreme and manurewa at the other

so when i read of taggers being stabbed, shop keepers being shot, home invasions leading to the beating to death of the inhabitants and which schools have the highest vandalism rates i am unsurprised to see it is manurewa and not remuera

[freezinhot]

Went into the mall the other day and was shocked!! Totally different from what it once was years back.

Its a shame but regentrification works both ways, for good or bad.

FH

[Anita]

Hopefully, things may change in years to come.

As those middle class Indians/Fiji Indians etc are finding properties in Central - Roskill, East - Mt Wellington, and South - Papatoetoe are 'less affordable ' to purchase are having no much options but Manurewa to 'buy' - 'better parts' of M'rewa, at this stage.

Thus eventually this will xpell the 'dollies' to Kawerau or Murupara/Tokora etc , I guess, within next few years to come ( True, HNZ stupidly build those 'mansions' to 'house' them too scattered thro' these areas, too) and if John Key 'drives', sensibly, it to minimize dollies in these areas, Manurewa being only 20-30km away from Central hub, which is really a 'prime' location, must be cherished as a 'preferred' place to live /'own' for all hardworking euro/angloasians and to any race.

Hope those years are not too far, hopefully in another 3-5yrs to come??. I guess. It is HAPPENING - in some areas of Manurewa , slowly but steadily, I think !!!

[Davo36]

Went into the mall the other day and was shocked!! Totally different from what it once was years back.

Its a shame but regentrification works both ways, for good or bad.

FH

Do you mean the mall is better or worse than you thought?

[Davo36]

Hopefully, things may change in years to come.

As those middle class Indians/Fiji Indians etc are finding properties in Central - Roskill, East - Mt Wellington, and South - Papatoetoe are 'less affordable ' to purchase are having no much options but Manurewa to 'buy' - 'better parts' of M'rewa, at this stage.

Thus eventually this will xpell the 'dollies' to Kawerau or Murupara/Tokora etc , I guess, within next few years to come ( True, HNZ stupidly build those 'mansions' to 'house' them too scattered thro' these areas, too) and if John Key 'drives', sensibly, it to minimize dollies in these areas, Manurewa being only 20-30km away from Central hub, which is really a 'prime' location, must be cherished as a 'preferred' place to live /'own' for all hardworking euro/angloasians and to any race.

Hope those years are not too far, hopefully in another 3-5yrs to come??. I guess. It is HAPPENING - in some areas of Manurewa , slowly but steadily, I think !!!

I really hope Manurewa does improve too.

However, I don't see the dollies moving down to Kawerau or Murupara/Tokora kind of areas. Manurewa is HUGE. There's 60 to 70,000 people there. To move a fair number of them you'd need heaps of houses and those won't spring up quickly.

There's also no employment down there.

[Dean@Massiveaction]

I ran a foster home for street kids there 20 years ago and it was terrible then in many parts. A lot of migration form Puke to Manurewa, closer to govt agencies, closer to good areas to steal from.
Homai etc. had tinny houses everywhere, you could buy bullets (dope) on most street corners. Then they built the Clendon shopping centre.....

[muppet]

Thus eventually this will xpell the 'dollies' to Kawerau or Murupara/Tokoroa

Nope, won't happen.
Why, no and I mean no new houses are being built to house any new "foreigners."
Existing houses already full.

[freezinhot]

Do you mean the mall is better or worse than you thought?

Worse Davo! Its seems like its now a town which doesnt know which way its going, there is so much diverse people there it is really a kind of unique township, its hard to get a handle on.

FH

[Davo36]

Well they call it multiculturalism and it's always touted as a good thing by the lefties. You know, interesting, diverse communities, how lovely.

The trouble is all of these immigrants have their own ideas about how to go about business. So trying to do business with an Iraqi can be different to doing business with a Korean which is different to how and Indian person does it and so on. It actually causes a lot of friction. It's not all, "Gee they have a different take on things, I should learn from that..." it's more like "The f***in ***** doesn't wants me to drop my price by half...".

And then you have the more established cultures here: The Maori think it's all theirs anyway and we're all tresspassing, the Europeans who have been here for 4-5 generations reckon things should be done certain ways, the Pacific Islanders are just confused and so on.

So while I think the world all has to eventually amalgamate and the sooner the races/cultures/people all put aside their differences and just get along the better, this is not going to happen very quickly. Whenever you get different cultures coming together - anywhere in the world, you get friction. This is just human nature.

David

[Perry]

Good to see the bare facts of opinions
being offered the way they are, without
nastiness or any screams of xenophobia.

[Bluekiwi]

Sounds like a lot of racist white faces scared of seeing brown ones, while not wanting to appear like a racist you probably dont mind being one Davo.

I dont live in Manurewa, I have been working in Wiri for about 10 years and drive around the place a lot, and work at a large manufacturing plant that has hundreds of workers who come from Manurewa.

If seeing lots of faces different to you worries you, then hey it might be a scary place, but it doesnt worry me, I havent seen anything that scares me yet, and the last 2 years I have done a lot of driving the streets and property viewing.

Manukau is an up and coming area, some parts of Clendon are new and have sea views, Weymouth is a great place, anything along Great South Rd is very popular, the train service through Southmall / Homai is getting better and better, their is a new university coming in Manukau, their is a the new motorway axis, where from Manurewa you will be able to go north / west / south very very quickly.

I think you will find in the next 10 years that Manurewa will be queezed very quickly, like Otara its surrounded by booming area's.

Certainly dive's like Randwick Park, the Clendon area's next to the womans prison, the youth facilities are to be avoided, as well as the slum type crossleased sandwich property area's.

But avoid investing here at your peril, you can be a fool like Davo and avoid it on principal, or make informed choice based on what potential there is.
Manurewa is a huge area, you cant just class it as one.

[WBuffett]

I am a fool I suppose, but I avoid it and south auckland, even as far as driving through the areas unless its essential, too depressing seeing the tagging, the run down properties, the street kids sniffing glue, the fat people smoking and drinking beer all day long in their overgrown front yards filled with decomposing car bodies. Perhaps I generalise a touch and haven't been to the good areas of Manurewa or South Auckland but because of what I have seen I have no desire to see or experience these better parts much the same way, as for the potential I will leave that to someone other than me.

[Green Fish]

Quite right: You have to get the right % return to make it worth the drive, the effort, and the risk of being assaulted by one or more of the feral humans that live in the area that would not have been conceived were it not for the DPB.