The company was established in 2020 to take over Kainga Ora's housing portfolio from Tawa to Paekakariki, excluding Porirua East.

It has plans to build upwards of 2500 more homes over the next 50 years.

Chief executive James Te Puni says long term it aims to offer rent-to-own options, but for now, the priority is housing security. Read more

Smith was talking on Tuesday with NewsTalkZB's Mike Hosking.

Locked out

Smith told Hosking that community housing providers had previously been prevented from buying houses from developers. Instead, Kainga Ora sought out the developers and purchased their houses for the Government.

Smith said that, time and time again, first home owners were locked out of the market because Kainga Ora came along with a big chequebook.

He says Kainga Ora were servants of the Government.

Pointing the finger at the former Housing Minister, Smith said she needs to take blame [for] 80 percent of what has occurred.

Smith told Hosking that he thought the new Government is onto a good thing

A review of Kainga Ora by Sir Bill English found that, rather than collaborating with the community housing sector, the previous Government wanted to work alone.

Smith thinks that was part of the issue.

Elaborating, he said it was also because community housing providers live and work in their communities and know their communities while the Government does not.

Easy choice

"Offering affordable housing to Kiwis is vital if the country is to progress" says Mike Fox, director of Lower Hutt company EasyBuild.

Speaking with CathNews, Fox said he is looking forward to having community housing providers such as Monte Cecilia build good quality community housing for people in need.

"Offering affordable housing to Kiwis is vital for the progression of our country" he said.

Fox has been in the affordable housing business for many years and has witnessed the approaches of successive governments to community housing.

He agrees with Bernie Smith's critique about keeping its housing solutions 'in-house'.

Fox told CathNews that the approach "was to the detriment of New Zealand's social housing stock and stifled innovation in this space.

"Community Housing Providers are the ones on the ground, working effectively and efficiently with residents and understanding what works in their own communities" says Fox.

Positive change coming

Smith thinks the state housing sector can be managed differently.

Acknowledging that the queue for state housing is chronic, Smith suggested bigger is not always better.

"You've got to move away from a model where housing managers have got too many properties to manage" he said.

This isn't the case with community housing providers where the managers actually get to know their tenants, he added.

"They are therefore switched on to where there might be a problem, because they know the tenants rather than the other way around, where they're only getting visited when there are issues."

Seeing change coming, Smith told Hosking he predicts "seeds of positivity" will likely show within the next 12 months.

Sources

• NewstalkZB
• Supplied EasyBuild

Sitting on Queen Street East in the Hastings suburb of Parkvale since 1987, the 1960s Lockwood-styled St Mark's Presbyterian Church is in its final days as demolition starts to prepare the site for a social housing development.

Since the dissolution of the St Mark's congregation three years ago, St Andrew's, Hastings, has been looking after the building facilities and considering what to do with the church, which it says is in poor condition. Read more

The review - which former Prime Minister Sir Bill English led - found the state housing agency has not been responsibly managing the billions of dollars it is allocated.

It's a very strong critique of Kainga Ora, says Monte Cecelia chief executive Vicki Sykes.

She's concerned that though the Government has had the report since March, its response is light on detail - leaving many unanswered questions.

The report questions Kainga Ora's financial competence and highlights a $700 million annual deficit.

Why housing's in a mess

"We don't have cross-party support for housing and we don't have long-term generational planning for housing," Sykes says.

"We get a flip-flop every time there is a change in government and it's really not helpful, especially when there are significant pauses in policy and spending."

Right now, Kainga Ora is working on a plan which must be completed by the end of the year.

Meanwhile Sykes says waiting for it is having a "significant effect" on community housing and commercial property development sectors.

Providers can't plan easily and it limits what they can do without funding security, she says.

"We can provide housing - physical infrastructure and tenancy management - at least as efficiently or more than the government" she points out.

But without cross-party commitment to 20-30 year contract funds in order to make multimillion-dollar projects financially viable, it's difficult for the sector to commit to them.

Transitional housing on skids

Transitional housing is a critical part of the housing ecosystem, Sykes says.

It's part of the service Monte Cecilia offers.

Effective wrap-around services so tenants can move to stable long-term housing are essential.

Yet the Kainga Ora report indicates a question mark over the continuation of wrap-around services.

Sykes says Monte Cecilia, like many housing providers, is ready to build, develop or manage more property and take on more tenants.

"But without funding support for building and operational subsidies [or clear messaging from the Government] our hands are tied...

"The Government postponed their decision on that till perhaps 12 to 18 months."

A lot of traction will be lost, people with skills will go elsewhere, contracts for other work will be undertaken. Local and job-specific knowledge will disappear, she predicts.

Mixed messages

Mixed messages between Kainga Ora and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development didn't help Kainga Ora, Sykes thinks.

They had differing views on 'fiscal responsibility' and 'a reasonable return on investment' - and whether or not Kainga Ora should break even.

"If our society wants everyone housed adequately - which costs money and investment - we need to realise this sort of enterprise can't break even," Sykes says.

Post-war Government big spending projects - including housing - offer another model. They stimulated the economy and provided full employment - plus housing, she suggests.

The Government needs to choose between breaking even and fiscal responsibility - how they reconcile those remains to be seen, Sykes says.

Source

• Pacific Media Network

The expectation from neighbours who are disturbed by poor behaviour is that Kainga Ora, or the police, or "government" in general, should "crack down hard" on those who ignore or defy the rules and normal conventions of good citizenship.

This might entail sanctions or evictions.

A couple of points here. I use "poor behaviour" advisedly because it arises from two forms of poverty, the first being relative financial poverty.

As Bob Marley sang: A hungry man is an angry man. Cost of living get so high, rich and poor they start to cry, they say, "Oh! What a tribulation."

The second (and, I would argue, more disabling) form of poverty, is poverty of spirit.

This arises when people feel they have no agency, no power to shape their lives and the circumstances of their wellbeing.

I appreciate that the political mood of the moment is to smash and bash the non-compliant.

But another (and more likely to be effective) approach might be to work with social housing tenants to describe, and then define, the social environment in which they want to live. It's called intentional community building.

Building Intentional Communities

I believe that one of the elements that confounds the successful utilisation of Aotearoa's social housing is the lack of intentional community building and the absence of attention to the social architecture of residential tenancies in social housing complexes.

What might that look like?

In 1973, as a community volunteer, I was the fieldworker for the Wellington Tenants Protection Association. We organised a rent strike against a Wellington rack-rent slumlord.

When we brought the tenants together, we discovered that, over and above the immediate concerns of their rents and tenancies, they were also facing issues of food security.

As they were already collaborating over the rent strike, it was a simple step to set up a food co-operative and to bring immediate relief to each whanau by providing affordable good-quality kai.

Moreover, in Newtown at least, we set up a community garden and established play groups and holiday programmes at the nearby community centre.

When people have a shared vision and a channel through which to co-operate, life becomes better. This is hardly rocket science.

Here's another lesson. In the late 1980s, I was awarded a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Scholarship. I ended up working with the Easterhouse Festival in Glasgow, Scotland, an arts-based community-building programme.

Easterhouse is a suburb of Glasgow, and a housing project there was intended to be the solution to the poor tenement housing in the Gorbals, an area in the city of Glasgow on the south bank of the River Clyde.

By the late 19th century, the Gorbals had become densely populated with poor quality overcrowded housing. Poverty was commonplace and violence was endemic. In a word, the area was a slum.

After World War Two, a comprehensive slum clearance programme led to whanau from the Gorbals being relocated to Easterhouse.

Easterhouse is a physically isolated suburb six miles east of the city centre, poorly served by public transport and cut off by the M8 motorway that runs along its periphery. Sound familiar?

Because the social architecture was ignored, the whole effort was a disaster. Easterhouse became infamous as the worst place in Great Britain to live.

When I visited Easterhouse, tenants were housed in blocks of six flats, three stories either side of a common stairwell. The stairwell had become a pissoir. There was broken glass and dog-shit everywhere.

Despite the lofty ambitions of the planners and the noble intent of the politicians, this urban environment was riddled with poverty, poor infrastructure, shoddily-built and maintained housing, and a lack of local investment and employment opportunities.

In recent years, I've watched Kainga Ora's intensification of housing, particularly in Auckland, and more recently in Napier and Hastings.

Existing housing stock has been demolished and the classic quarter-acre sections on which one whare previously sat now feature two duplexes.

Four whanau now occupy the same area of land once occupied by one. Huge developments are planned, and housing minister Chris Bishop wants councils to make space more readily available.

But where's the evidence of the human planning — the social and interpersonal architecture, not just with the social housing tenants but with their neighbours and community?

I've been reminded of the spectre of Easterhouse and fear that we are about to repeat the same mistake.

I think I'm pretty much up with the play about what's possible in social housing. I chair the Waiohiki Community Charitable Trust.

We are a social housing provider, and, before Cyclone Gabrielle, we administered 14 social houses, predominantly in the context of papakainga. We're about a decade in.

Like my cousin Murphy, I'm a relentless optimist.

When we built our first papakainga, I thought that the provision of warm, dry, safe, housing at an affordable rent, and with security of tenure, would win the day.

Tenants would say: "Wow! How lucky we are. Let's look after this place and create a wonderful environment."

Not so. We had to cope with cuzzies who had city habits and weren't used to shared spaces. We had some with unacceptable behaviours who had to amend their ways and habilitate.

It wasn't easy, and in some instances, it was personally challenging and downright unpleasant.

But we prevailed. Now, post-cyclone, people are more appreciative.

The mara kai is pumping, we've planted hundreds of native trees, and those hedges that survived are trimmed and tidy. Tenants are proud of their environment, and it shows.

So, back to Kainga Ora. The housing need is great, and so are the social needs of our whanau.

Where to start

If we want to tackle domestic violence, sub-optimal childcare, abuse of intoxicants, be they licit or illicit, and dare I say it, gangs, then a good place to start is literally on the social housing whanau doorstep.

Ministers whose portfolios cover social housing, Chris Bishop and Tama Potaka, have an opportunity here.

They could choose to step away from the oppressive and alienating approach that this National-led coalition government seems determined to take around Maori and Pasifika issues by facilitating intentional community building.

Imagine gathering prospective tenants together before occupying a new housing estate, sharing a kai and having a korero about how they want to live together.

The same could be done with existing clusters of social housing tenants and their neighbours. Maybe involve social service providers.

We can move the community discussion away from complaining about problems to discussing solutions and opportunities — in other words, assist the shift from pathology to potential. It needn't be a complex process.

It's doable. So, let's have a crack at it, eh?

• Denis O'Reilly lives at Waiohiki in Hawke's Bay where he chairs the Waiohiki Community Charitable Trust. He is a writer, social activist and consultant.
• First published in E-Tangata. Republished with permission.

Dunedin's Night Shelter Trust says immediate and long-term solutions are essential.

The Night Shelter currently provides beds, bathroom and laundry facilities for six homeless people. It's fundraising to provide for six more.

That's just a temporary solution to a huge, long-term problem. In Dunedin, there are at present about 3,000 homeless people.

"We need a city-wide homelessness solution that makes us all feel proud" the Night Shelter Trust says.

The wider problem involves providing "homes plus the support people needed".

To achieve this, vision, leadership and financial backing are needed. Those attributes could provide "transformational results" the Trust says.

Immediate need

Right now, the Night Shelter needs $510,000 for building alterations (consent already granted) to enlarge its accommodation.

Limited capacity has seen people turned away and rules developed so people can't stay too long or too often.

Permanent solutions are elusive. Support to homeless people is intermittent. Some have serious needs.

Some people fall through the cracks: people with challenges such as addiction, illness, mental illness, intellectual disability and convictions. Some homeless people the Trust sees are very young.

While some adults are provided with supported living, others miss out and are "left having to navigate health and social agencies without advocacy" the Trust notes.

Longer term solutions

To better support people, the Trust believes it's necessary to have case managers with a focus on "relationship building that achieves results".

Case managers could work to achieve solutions by creating an environment in which their clients can thrive and have control of their lives.

The Dunedin City Council's objective of functional zero homelessness is heartening, the Trust says. The objective envisions more people leaving the situation than entering it.

One positive way to achieve this could be for the Council to "to take the lead" alongside other agencies to "enable the delivery of a more comprehensive service".

Another option would be to create a City Mission in Dunedin that's the equivalent of the Auckland City Mission (ACM).

The ACM's newly-built facility incorporates the HomeGround apartment building, with its on-site health and social services, along with an outreach service that locates homeless people and enables them to accept help.

At present, Dunedin's support services could be "quite siloed" because of limited funding and service criteria.

Government support absent

Central government funding for services in the South is "not prioritised" compared with other parts of the country, the Trust says.

It notes no agency in Dunedin is funded to deliver Housing First. That's the government programme that aims to provide homes and support for people who have been homeless for at least a year.

The number of homes being built by the council and Kainga Ora were also "not enough" says the Trust.

"People are stuck on waiting lists for housing and their situation can deteriorate in the meantime, with flow-on costs to health and mental health services — and prisons."

Source

• Otago Daily Times
• CathNews NZ

Jayde Jones's Kainga Ora home was built on a flood plain, and lifted off its foundations when a historic deluge swept across the city.

Jones believes the state housing agency should pay to replace her belongings; Kainga Ora says that's the responsibility of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). Read more

It's been dubbed the sale of the century: in Auckland, 230ha to 270ha of public or state land is quietly being sold to private or sharemarket-listed developers, to build free-market homes across the city.

Large blocks of state land are being sold bit-by-bit in a 15- to 20-year plan. New state homes sit close to new privately-owned houses on recently-sold former state land.

"It's a sad indictment of our country that even as 25-30,000 people are trapped living in temporary and transitional housing, the government is selling state houses to private developers," says Smith.

"I understand they are selling it to fund long-term intensification plans, but this worsens the current problem, which is already at crisis levels, in the hopes of catching up later. The impact will be felt for generations in health, education and justice outcomes."

He should know. The not-for-profit Monte Cecilia provides transitional and community housing to about 2000 families each year in the South and West Auckland areas.

Of particular concern to Smith are the children living in temporary transitional housing accommodation, like the 4000 motel rooms the government pays for. Four hundred of the 815 children currently in Monte Cecilia temporary accommodation are younger than seven.

Reducing public housing stock will force them to stay in these situations longer, he says.

"Transitional housing providers who promised to find a long-term home for families in three to six months now cannot fulfil that promise with the Government selling the housing supply line out from under us."

He says it's "not ok to say to the 10,000-plus children across our nation in temporary housing that ‘the State will sort it eventually' because for decades they have not".

Smith says the children are living in homes full of stress. They witness taxes, food and fuel costs constantly rising, pushing families into debt as they try to survive and work out how they are going to put food on the table.

"Sadly, these children often watch their parents go without food so they can eat," Smith says.

"These children, who are in their formative years, are being traumatised by the feeling that nobody cares and they don't count because they live the reality of poverty, hour by hour, day by day, running into weeks, months and now potentially years".

Political point-scoring or promises don't offer a future or hope, says Smith.

He does have a suggestion, though.

"The government must not go it alone.

"With the right mix of capital funding and long-term policies to unlock financing opportunities, we can work together to solve our housing crisis by building thousands more homes while developing strong healthy communities in safe, warm and secure housing".

Source

• NZ Herald
• Scoop