Vital Update – Tauranga 2023

'Whakahou Taketake Vital Update – Tauranga’ is a research project undertaken by Tauranga City Council, alongside the Acorn Foundation, TECT and BayTrust. We undertook this research to better understand the communities who make up Tauranga, and what their needs, wants and aspirations are for their neighbourhoods and the wider city.

The representative findings have reaffirmed some already established understandings, notably that people want a revitalised city centre and traffic continues to be a critical issue. However, the data shows that since 2020, there is an increase in the number of people getting out of their cars to get to school and work. Eighteen percent of people walk or jog to get to work, compared to five percent in 2020, and 17 percent cycle, compared to six percent in 2020.

In addition, the survey data shows:

• A significant rise of survey participants who have experienced family violence – four percent in 2020 to 15 percent in 2023.
• The popularity of vaping among younger demographics – 23 percent of those aged 13-19 years and 34 percent aged 19-24 years have vaped in the past 6 months, and 12 percent of 13-18 year olds vaped within the last week.
• Over half of people renting homes are paying upwards of $400 per week, and 36 percent of those surveyed do not have the savings or income to get by for more than a month should an unexpected expense arise.
• 17 percent of survey participants in Tauranga are currently experiencing mental health issues.

These are just some of the findings Vital Update 2023 has brought to light. View the reports, which provide some insights into the data available, and use the dashboards to explore, compare and extract the data that is relevant to your community and operations.

We’re not keeping this information to ourselves; it is available to the community to use, whether you belong to a community organisation or community-driven business, or even if you’re just someone who wants to see Tauranga thrive.

By using the dashboards, you can refine your search to the area/s and group/s that are of interest to you.

Specifically for community organisations:

The dashboards and reports contain invaluable information that may offer you some fresh insights about the communities you operate in and provide you with quantitative evidence to guide your decision-making and direction.

The data can also help with your operational planning, delivery and funding, supporting you to continue the incredible mahi you do to help make Tauranga a better city to live in for everyone.

‘Whakahou Taketake Vital Update’ has given us the opportunity to hear from a diverse range of voices. We reached out to all corners of the community and received input from over 6,000 Tauranga residents. This has resulted in findings that reflect the unique make-up of our various communities.

We made a deliberate and conscious effort to speak to people from a range of priority groups, to ensure the results were representative of our diverse communities, including:

• Ageing population (65+ years)
• Youth (13-24 years)
• Māori
• Pacific communities
• Ethnic communities
• Disabled people (including carers)
• People experiencing homelessness*
• Rainbow community
• Parents & caregivers
• Children (5-12 years)**

*As there is no detailed statistical information available to conduct weighting for this priority group and to ensure that we focus on all those experiencing homelessness equally, no weighting has been applied. For this reason Homelessness report data could not be included in the main dashboard and filters. A separate dashboard was created to share the anonymous responses from the 205 People experiencing homelessness who completed the survey.

Homelessness Dashboard

**For the first time a dedicated survey was created to hear from our younger residents. A separate dashboard was developed to display the data that we collected from over 1,100 children for this Child Wellbeing Study. These responses are in addition to the 6,000 responses from the other respondents.

Child Wellbeing Dashboard

Numerous reports have been generated from the data we collected. These are a great tool to review the high-level data, or if you want to see some examples of the type of information that has been collected. However, these reports only provide a sample of the data that is available.

The dashboards contain all the data and have been intentionally designed for you to access the information that specifically matters to you and/or your organisation easily; giving you the ability to analyse and compare.

To those who participated in the survey, thank you for sharing your voice. We have heard from all walks of life, and this has ensured that the data reflects our unique and diverse community here in Tauranga.