About us
Speech to the Australasian Housing Institute
- Minister and Lesley.
Dr Lesley McTurk
Chief Executive of Housing New Zealand
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
It is a pleasure to be here with so many colleagues in the social housing sector at a time in the economic cycle when our work is at its most challenging, and demand in some communities is quietly deepening.
We need new ideas, we need to review what works and what doesn't, we need to celebrate our successes, and we need to learn from each other. This forum provides that opportunity, and for its part, Housing New Zealand goes into the debate today with its ears open.
The Minister has spoken this morning about the ideas and policy he is developing around the community housing sector, tackling homelessness, and emergency housing. To complete the picture, I want to outline for you some of the new thinking Housing New Zealand has been doing as it responds to the economic environment, and how that relates to the work of others in the housing sector, including many of you.
For the benefit of our Australian visitors, I thought I'd start with a quick summary of Housing New Zealand, and its activities.
Housing New Zealand is New Zealand's biggest residential landlord. We manage a network of 69,000 homes that are rented to people who need them most, and community groups providing important social services. But our role is broader than this.
Like many developed countries, New Zealand has faced soaring house prices, and as a result, a declining homeownership rate. In response to these trends, the government has asked Housing New Zealand to provide products and services that preserve access to homeownership for low and modest-income households.
We have also been asked to provide stimulus for the provision of more affordable and social housing through the Housing Innovation Fund, and through developments we are undertaking on Crown land.
When I joined Housing New Zealand three years ago, the Corporation was grappling with three core issues:
1) Balancing the pressure for more state housing in some areas than others, and with supply, and the need to invest in upgrading existing housing;
2) Managing the impact on communities of an allocation system for state housing that concentrates deprivation in particular areas; and
3) Properly integrating Housing New Zealand's role as a landlord, with its evolving role in homeownership, and housing supply.
We are starting to make real progress on these issues. We have been trying to think outside the boundaries of our business, and be bold in what we are prepared to consider and explore. New ideas are taking shape which we are now in conversation with the Government about, and would like to discuss with you as well.
Critical to much of our thinking has been the concept of a Housing Continuum.
Over the past year we have been researching and mapping the housing needs and services in New Zealand from Crisis and Emergency Housing services at one end, to independent homeownership at the other. We've been researching the size of each of these market segments, and the major players in them. We've laid this out on a continuum.
We have begun to think about our customers, and our products and services in the context of this continuum. We've also begun to think about our customers not as people who just need a home, but as people who are on different housing pathways across the continuum, who enter it at different stages, and progress to different points on it as well.
Some people are on a pathway out of group accommodation and into state housing, and because of their personal circumstances are unlikely to leave state housing. Other people are in state housing but aspire to, and with help can achieve and sustain, homeownership or independence in the private rental sector.
Housing New Zealand is working with the government to reconsider its role in the continuum. We are conscious that unless people can move forward along their housing pathway, it creates a bottleneck in the market because housing supply is limited in each segment. This impedes the progress of others, and can push up demand for state housing and other community services as there will always be a limited supply.
As a result, we are thinking about the products and services needed to best facilitate progress along the continuum. We are thinking about how demand can be managed, and most importantly, we are thinking about who is best placed to provide new and existing services— ourselves, other public agencies, or the community or private sectors?
One of the first initiatives that has grown out of this thinking is the Government's Options and Advice Service, which Housing New Zealand is currently piloting at eight sites around the country.
As you look across the housing continuum, you start to realise the opportunities that arise from better integration between the different players in the housing sectors, and the value that can be added for the customer if the services of different public, private and community agencies are knitted together for them.
At the present time, Housing New Zealand can only house one in every five people that asks us for help. This isn't new demand, or future demand, it's demand we already face. For many of these people a state house is not the most appropriate place for them. Their circumstances are such that they would not qualify as priority cases for us.
Under our old way of working Housing New Zealand had nothing to offer those we couldn't house. An Options and Advice Service changes that. It provides us with a means of assisting families on the cusp of qualifying for our services without disadvantaging the people who need state homes the most by putting people in state housing who have lesser need.
In the neighbourhood units where the service is being piloted, customers are provided with information about state housing, private rental housing, the government assistance available to access private rental housing, and the services available to help with homeownership. Closer ties have been forged with Work and Income and private rental agents to develop packaged options for customers. At these sites, Housing New Zealand has essentially positioned itself as both a provider of services, and a broker of other people's services.
The advantage of this approach is twofold. Housing New Zealand gets to help more people, and the customer gets to make a choice about which pathway they head down. In doing so, they can exercise some control over their own circumstances, making the whole experience of asking for help a more positive one.
The eight Options and Advice pilots are currently being evaluated, and there will be some wrinkles to iron out. We need to ensure that people are making sustainable choices for themselves, and that we are continually improving our services based on the experience of our customers.
But what is already apparent is when you give people a choice, they take it. When their options are clearly explained, and help offered, the people knocking on our door are not just applying for a state home if they are eligible, many are choosing housing in the private sector instead with the full complement of government assistance around them, and some are recognising their capacity for homeownership.
I think the concept of partnership as a delivery model for housing services is one with considerable scope, and something that as a sector we need to think very seriously about.
The Options and Advice approach neatly demonstrates that the answers to demand don't just lie in more services, but in integrating those already available across housing providers into more accessible and seamless offerings for people who need housing assistance.
In the resource constrained environment we all face, getting the most out of what we already do is critical, but it will require of us a new level of co-operation, and a better understanding and agreement of our respective roles on the housing continuum.
For Housing New Zealand's part, we do not see ourselves as the only social housing provider, we see ourselves in a community of providers. We recognise the importance of the third sector, of iwi groups, and the private sector. We recognise that many of your customers are also ours, or could easily be, and that sometimes the best place for us to invest is not only in our services, but also in yours.
These same opportunities and challenges of partnership across the housing continuum are also very relevant to community development.
As I alluded to earlier, we face a legacy in New Zealand of old state homes in need of redevelopment concentrated in particular communities. The allocation system we use to tenant those homes with people who need them most is accentuating the challenges of these concentrations.
It may make us uncomfortable to acknowledge this fact but we have to face up to it. Housing New Zealand is. We have begun tackling the conundrum on three fronts.
First, thanks to a $125 million investment by the Government through its Jobs and Growth package, we have embarked on a huge programme to upgrade our homes.
This year we will spend $152m on improvements to 21,000 state homes — that's 57 a day.
Despite the size of this programme, it only scratches the surface of what we need to do to ensure state housing is fit for purpose, and meets future demand. The full cost of this challenge is in the billions, and we are currently immersed in discussions with the government about how to go about tackling it.
If we decide to invest in an ongoing programme of upgrading state housing, then it is beholden on us to ensure that we leverage that investment to the greatest social and economic effect. To achieve this we need an operating model for large scale urban renewal that is effective and efficient.
This brings me to the second of Housing New Zealand strategies to tackle community development — the Tamaki Transformation Programme, an initiative we are confident will yield the operating model we need to make real progress.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Programme, Tamaki is an area comprising the suburbs of Glen Innes, Panmure, and Point England here in Auckland. Some 17,000 people live in 5000 households in Tamaki, 56 per cent of which are owned by Housing New Zealand.
Our homes in Tamaki are in dire need of investment, and despite the state spending roughly twice the household average on health and social services in the area, Tamaki's social indicators have been going backwards.
The transformation programme has grown out of a shared aspiration that Tamaki can and will overcome its challenges. That aspiration has its root in the local community, but it is also strongly held across central and local government as well.
A unique multiagency partnership has grown up aimed at tackling employment, safety and security, housing, education, health and social services in the community over a 20 year timeframe. The project is overseen by a Board that includes the community, key government agencies, the Auckland City Council, and the private sector.
Entirely new approaches are being developed within the Programme to rationalise state services, harness community knowledge about what works best, and provide greater opportunity for private sector participation. The goal of this partnership is to achieve a broader transformation for the people of Tamaki than could achieved by any one organisation or sector working alone.
You will hear more about Tamaki from Housing New Zealand's Tamaki workstream director Graham Bodman later today, but it is my hope that as it evolves the programme will provide a way of working that can be emulated around the country.
In the meantime, there is a third approach Housing New Zealand is taking to address the challenges of concentrations of deprivation that I want to touch on briefly — improved tenancy management.
The social obligations the government has placed upon Housing New Zealand require us to help our tenants sustain their tenancies, but they also require us to support community safety. This can be a delicate balance, and one we recognise we need to keep working on.
We are currently re-engineering our business to give our frontline staff more time to spend with our customers, and less time on process. At the same time, we are developing better tools for our people to use to make a difference to people and communities. One of these tools is a new policy to help our staff better manage situations of anti-social behaviour by our tenants or people associated with a tenancy.
The Encouraging Good Neighbour Behaviour Policy lays out the range of interventions we need to make in tenancies where behaviour is starting to effect the neighbourhood. The goal of this policy is to change behaviour, and allow the tenant to sustain their tenancy. But in order to bring about changes to behaviour, we need clear consequences if no change is made.
To provide these consequences, we have introduced the use of 90 Day Notices to end tenancies in some situations.
Prior to using 90 Day Notices, we placed all our tenancy terminations before the Tenancy Tribunal for a decision.
This prevented us from effectively responding to some situations of significant anti-social behaviour, particularly intimidation, because the Tribunal requires evidence to make its decisions, and witnesses were too afraid to come forward in many cases.
Our new approach enables us to act when we believe it is in the community interest to do so.
There has been a great deal of media attention about this approach, and with it some concern expressed about the use of the policy.
I want to put it into context for you. Since March this year we have issued 14 90 Day Notices for anti-social behaviour. We have 69,000 tenancies.
We are using 90 Day Notices carefully. We are using them in situations where it is important for the community to do so. And we are also working with the tenants in these situations to assist them into alternative accommodation.
The reality is Housing New Zealand has always terminated tenancies, we have always moved people out of our homes. We are a landlord that has to work in the same legal framework as private landlords; our tenants need our help, but they also have obligations, and we must enforce those obligations to satisfy both our statutory and social responsibilities.
To do otherwise would fail the community, and ultimately fail our tenants too.
In conclusion, I hope I have given you a snapshot of some of the new ideas Housing New Zealand is pursuing. I hope they spark a bit of debate.
In the housing sector, we do face demand greater than our resources. Inevitably debate centres around whether or not we have enough state homes, or whether we are building sufficiently more to prepare us for the future.
Housing New Zealand is approaching that debate a little differently. We believe we need to measure the extent to which we can meet need, not just count homes. We have to think differently, work differently, co-operate not compete. That is a challenge for Housing New Zealand, but is also a challenge for the whole housing sector.
I look forward to reporting back to you again soon on the progress of the conversations Housing New Zealand is having with the Government, and some of the initiatives I have touched on today.
Thank you.
