Election 2011 - Party Policies - Housing - Housing New Zealand

Housing New Zealand

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• Reform the appropriate legislation to encourage long term financing of infrastructure including the use of private/public partnerships. (more here)

• Ensure that the Housing New Zealand Corporation has resources to increase its rate of acquisition and building of state housing units to at least 3000 units a year for the next 3 years to meet current short fall in social housing.
• Maintain an income related rental policy of 25% of income for Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants.
• Make sure new state housing is integrated sensitively within the community, near facilities and services, and that buildings are designed for flexibility of use.
• Ensure that new state housing is designed in accordance with the community decision-making and sustainable building practices components of this policy.
• Give priority for social housing to people who are living in extremely substandard or overcrowded accommodation, pregnant women, adults with dependent children or elderly family members, people recovering from mental illness, and people with physical or intellectual impairments. (more here)

• Labour will reaffirm Housing New Zealand's role as a social housing provider providing security and support for those most in need. Housing New Zealand will provide assistance for tenants with high and complex needs, ensuring that they are connected with the necessary support to help them sustain their tenancies.
• Labour will continue to invest in the acquisition and maintenance of state houses and is committed to income-related rents for state house tenants.
• Labour will abolish the bureaucratic 'one size fits all' policy of reviewable tenancies,and instead allow tenancy managers to work on a case by case basis with tenants to move them on if their situation improves.
• Labour will ensure that every client who comes into Housing New Zealand has a needs assessment before being offered the 'options and advice' service. Category C and D clients will not be denied access to the state house waiting list but will continue to be offered advice on alternative accommodation options.
• Labour will ensure there is a tenants advocate representing their interests on the board of Housing New Zealand.
• Labour will empower Housing New Zealand to be more proactive at a regional level,both in asset and tenancy management, allowing them to operate in a way which more efficiently and effectively meets the specific needs of their local community.
• Labour will cease the selling down of the state housing stock in order to keep up the stock of state housing and to enable the quality integrated renewal of state housing communities.
• Labour will ensure that where Housing New Zealand tenants are displaced because of urban renewal projects, or major rebuilds such as in Christchurch, that they are given the option of moving back to their communities when they are rebuilt.
• Labour will focus on new builds for any state house acquisitions, rather than purchasing existing properties, to increase the overall housing stock. Where possible new state houses will be built in accordance with the disability sector approved Lifemark standard for accessible, adaptable lifetime design. (more here)

• Build 10,000 more state houses within the next two years.  This will start to  deal with the current crisis in housing availability for low income people, and will also create jobs and training opportunities.
• Maintain income related rents at no more than 25% of income for state, local government and community and iwi social housing.
• Increase Government support for third sector housing providers – whanau, hapu and iwi, community and church based organisations who work to provide quality social housing (rental and owned) in local areas.  Support the development of indigenous housing models, as well as sweat equity, shared equity, eco housing, cooperative housing and other innovative forms of home ownership.
• Introduce a major papakainga housing programme, which works to overcome in sensitive, practical ways the many current barriers to building housing on Maori communally owned land. (more here)

• Assessments for housing need of rentals undertaken by Housing NZ to be inclusive of whānau, e.g. accounting for health, social, cultural and economic wellbeing. (more here)

• Complete, by the end of 2013, the insulation of the 4600 remaining state houses built before 1978 – when insulation standards were introduced.
• Introduce a suspensions policy so that a state house tenant evicted for illegal behaviour may not be eligible for another state house for up to one year.
• Give HNZC the flexibility to reconfigure their housing stock to increase the number of houses in areas of high demand for those most in need of a home.(more here)

• Strengthen legislation to allow Housing NZ to evict problematic tenants more easily.
• Extend the existing scheme in which Work and Income NZ deducts Housing NZ rentals directly from benefits to include private sector rentals.
• Continue to sell state houses with very high valuations (some are over $1million) to purchase two, three or four other properties to be used as state houses. (more here)