71 Green St, Tahunanui, a purpose-built CYF home has been empty for more than eight years.

After eight years sitting empty and more than $500,000 in renovations a Child Youth and Family (CYF) home in Nelson will finally be tenanted.

The eight-bedroom house at 71 Green St in Tahunanui was leased by the Ministry of Social Development to the Nelson Tasman Housing Trust last week to use for social housing purposes.

With the exception of a few months in 2009 and 2010 when it was used by an Open Home Foundation foster family, the house has been unoccupied since 2007.

Before then it was used as a home for children under CYF care who had nowhere else to live.

Despite the extensive two-year revamp the Ministry of Social Development, in response to an Official Information Act request, wrote that CYF "does not have a need to utilise the home".

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Nelson Tasman Housing Trust director Carrie Mozena said it was sad the house had been such an "underutilised resource".

"There has been a lot of community interest in wanting to see that property used well ... people would come up with a project but the real question was could they access funding.

"The Ministry of Social Development has been under increasing and significant internal pressure to get the place occupied."

The trust initially explored using 71 Green St for much-needed emergency housing but the expenses involved with that were prohibitive, she said.

"We would have to employ people to live on-site and there's no guarantee we could get that funding.

"We don't want to put the cart before the horse. If we can put together a funding package which staffs [the house] and allows us to make moves to change to emergency housing we might, but it may be simpler to be social housing."

Mozena said the trust was searching for an appropriate family to offer a fixed-term social housing tenancy at the "very impressive" house.

Information obtained through the Official Information Act states that $526,000 was spent on new doors, windows, walls, carpet, security features and other renovations between 2013 and 2015.

In those two years CYF "developed other options for children in the area and as a result the property was deemed surplus to requirements," CYF regional director southern Theresa Perham said.

In March 2016, two 15-year-old boys were kept in jail cells at Nelson Police Station because of a lack of CYF beds across the country.

Several community organisations approached CYF about using the home during its refurbishment but the agency declined.

Ministry of Social Development deputy chief executive of organisational solutions Nicholas Pole said uses for the property were restricted by "local zoning and resource consents".

"Any [future] arrangements will have to take these factors into account."

In 2014 CYF said it had struggled to find appropriate foster parents for the home and would not use it to house young offenders.