NZ Post will not deliver to individual mailboxes in the Ara Hills development. Photo: RNZ/Leonard Powell
A resident of a new housing development in north Auckland is dumbfounded a move of less than two kilometres means he no longer receives mail.
Ara Hills in Ōrewa opened in 2022, 31km north of the Auckland CBD, with a mix of terraced and standalone homes.
But almost two years on, a stand-off with the developer means NZ Post will not deliver mail because the development is classed as rural.
For resident Gary Phillips, a move from one side of the motorway to the other has suddenly meant no mail in the letterbox.
"People are not getting important things like car registrations, medical appointments, fines, all those sorts of things and then if they don't get it, they don't know that they owe it and suddenly they're in debt," resident Penelope Jensen said.
Jensen attends meetings with Ara Hills residents, and said there had been plenty of frustration among the 120 households.
Auckland housing development still in dispute with NZ Post
"People were quite angry about it. And yeah, felt a bit betrayed, I think because when they bought up here, they didn't realise that they were going to face this situation."
Ara Hills is set to have 550 dwellings when building is complete. All have letterboxes out the front - rendered obsolete while developers AV Jennings and NZ Post continue to clash.
Michelle Palmer has lived in the development since 2022.
"We feel isolated. We actually don't feel like that it's going anywhere, we feel like we're kind of stuck between the developer and council and the post having a fight and we're the people that are actually getting impacted by it, but no one's really coming and actually apologising or asking how they can support us in the short term until they come up with some long-term solution."
Palmer has been redirecting her mail to her relative's house 28 kilometres away in Warkworth.
She, along with plenty of others, are holding off getting one of the PO boxes that AV Jennings is subsidising down the road in Ōrewa, a few minutes' drive away.
Ara Hills is zoned as rural by NZ Post, so mail is not delivered to residents' letterboxes. Photo: RNZ/Leonard Powell
"For us, if we do that, we're sort of conceding and [saying] that might be the long-term solution, and we don't think that's a long-term solution.
"There is no way that this is rural and we've got a letterbox out front. So we should be receiving it. And so we're standing our ground and hoping that they will actually provide a proper long-term solution."
Phillips is one of the residents who has been using a PO Box.
He moved in December 2023, after living nearby for 15 years.
"We really only moved about 1.8 kilometres. We're just the other side of the of the motorway exit and we've lived there for a long time. And we'd always had mail. No problem at all.
"So it was quite strange to us to come just over the other side of the motorway to to somewhere where there was nothing."
NZ Post declined to be interviewed but in a statement said it would deliver mail if a cluster of letterboxes was provided by the developer AV Jennings.
But AV Jennings' Katelyn Orton said that would not be happening.
"The anomaly when it comes to the mail delivery is simply a fact that NZ Post is trying to reduce its costs. So when it's seeing something as being rural, which is actually a fully formed residential street. that's about cost saving. That's not about development being out of sequence.
"I mean the homes exist. The residents exist. The only thing that doesn't exist is a mail service."
Orton said until NZ Post came to the party, the only option for residents would be a heavily subsidised PO box, which start at about $35 a year.
"AV Jennings have undertaken that to ensure that our residents can actually receive their mail. I know not all of our residents have taken that option. Because they've been hopeful as we have, that common sense would prevail and there'd be a practical solution in place that doesn't place financial or physical barriers to our residents receiving their mail."
Phillips is not a fan of either the PO box option or a cluster of hundreds of letterboxes.
However, "there's not a lot we can do as a small community apart from what we've already tried to do", he said.
"The post box is up up the hill. It's a stupid solution because there's hundreds and hundreds of houses here. You're going to take up a large part of our green space. And just fill it full of unsecure metal boxes."
NZ Post said if mail came into a delivery branch for residents of Ara Hills, it was held for a month before it is returned to sender.
For Jensen, that was not an option.
"It's important to us that we get our mail and if there's no other solution, then we just have to pay."
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