About us
Chairman's report
It is my pleasure to provide this introduction to Housing New Zealand Corporation's Annual Report for the 2007/08 financial year.
The Corporation has performed well meeting most of its targets. Where we have just missed our goals it has been in the areas of acquisitions, leasing and home loan products. Our own lending products have been affected with lower-than-expected uptake of Welcome Home Loans and a reduction in papaka - inga lending, although enrolments for education in home ownership were met.
Undoubtedly this has been the most volatile year for the housing market in the last decade. After years of rising prices and low interest rates we saw the affordability of housing extend beyond the reach of low income New Zealanders. The recent impact of the sub-prime crisis in the financial sector has affected the housing market worldwide and we have felt its impact with house sales reducing in number. If this ultimately impacts on prices it is possible we may yet see a positive improvement in home affordability.
To bridge some of the gap, this year we saw the launch of the Shared Equity product that provides Government support for first-home buyers with the size of their initial mortgage.
We recognise our responsibilities as the country's biggest residential landlord, with over 68,000 houses. In the course of the last year we offered additional housing for nearly 10,000 more households. We spent over $190 million in maintenance, and continued with six significant programmes of community renewal that look to improve areas with a history of poor housing and social deprivation through community development and physical reshaping of our housing stock.
This emphasis on community renewal is shaping our future strategic thinking as we seek to utilise the strengths of the community along with innovative whole-of-government social service delivery to our tenants. Now that two-thirds of our housing stock is 30 years or older we will see the future opportunities for building upgrades in a much wider community context.
The Community Renewal programme is a tangible example of the partnership approach. Communities and agencies work together on projects such as building parks, improving buildings, providing better access to affordable community services and increasing neighbourhood safety and reducing crime.
2007/08 Statement of Intent performance indicators reflected our strategic shift of focus to the customer. The indicators required the Corporation to deliver services not only to a wide range of clients, but also in partnership with them. Housing New Zealand tenants, local government, iwi, social housing providers, renters, and other government agencies were part of that journey. We now measure our tenant satisfaction - that survey revealed that 71 percent of customers are satisfied with the Corporation's service. This is not surprising given the number of programmes carried out in 2007/08 that looked after the tenant, either indirectly or directly.
Our partnership approach is also reflected in our work with local government, iwi and social housing providers. We encouraged community-based organisations, iwi and local government to expand their role as providers of sustainable, long-term housing through the Housing Innovation Fund. In addition, policy continued to work on ways to meet the needs of a growing social sector.
The Corporation has demonstrated it can make a valuable contribution to the Government's policy work on housing affordability. It successfully designed and implemented the Shared Equity pilot scheme, provided advice on the development of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill, the Tamaki Transformation Project, the KiwiSaver home deposit subsidy and housing on Maori freehold land.
The Corporation's asset management framework project is the Corporation's direct response to the Crown's review of asset management practices in government departments and Crown agencies led by the Treasury.
2007/08 was a successful year of change. A new Executive Team and a new operating model shifted focus to serve the needs of the community and deliver on our Statement of Intent measures.
Patrick N Snedden
Chairman
