Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — Housing New Zealand Corporation

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairperson. Kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei pō. One of the best pieces of news in this review was that as a result of $125 million for jobs and the growth plan, over 11,000 State houses were upgraded and 87 new State houses were to be built. We welcome the news, and we hope that local labour will be utilised. I give big ups to the Minister.

However, when we come to this review we consider that the situation is a little bit more dire. In Auckland, for example, demand is there for an additional 10,000 houses. Also, as the review points out, the changing demographics require different housing needs.

Over 26 percent of Māori live in one-parent households, and some 11 percent live in multi-family households. It is a different reality from the past, when the norm was a two-parent household with two or three children in it. A very high proportion of Māori children—35 percent—live in single-parent households. This brings with it evident differences in household income. Māori living in homes reliant on single incomes have the lowest income—$28,000 a year for one-parent households with children.

When we are talking about the Housing New Zealand Corporation, inevitably we are talking about Māori as an explicit part of its responsibility to provide housing for people with low incomes or specific housing needs. There has been some progress, which we commend—along with the Minister, again—including 25,000 State houses being upgraded, 5,000 participants in the Welcome Home First Steps programme for first-time homebuyers, and a particularly significant advance in more than 2,000 families directly benefiting from the Healthy Housing programme led by the Ministry of Health in areas of high health risk.

We cannot underestimate how important the relationship is between health and housing. In 2006, 46.3 percent of Pasifika children, 27.8 percent of Māori children, and 22.3 percent of Asian children lived in crowded conditions. Rates of acute rheumatic fever have been shown to be significantly and positively associated with household crowding in Aotearoa. That is an important statistic that I think we should take note of.

Coming back to the issue of low-income Māori households, this is a significant population for the Housing New Zealand Corporation. It is impossible to ascertain from the reports how many of the 20,000 people housed in the Tenancy Services are Māori. From the constituents who have come into my offices, or our offices as a party, we have little confidence that the corporation is adequately meeting the needs of whānau Māori, and that worries us. But there is room for optimism, and that is through the work of the iwi and Māori organisations that have indicated an interest in being involved in the management of State housing. The corporation’s annual report describes four projects approved under the Māori Demonstration Partnerships, which will result in 44 new properties in Northland, Tauranga, and Whakatāne. Of course, as the MP for Waiariki I am very happy about that, and I welcome it.

But there are other developments I want to refer to that bear reference to this review. This is in the context of partnership arrangements to construct social housing that have been negotiated with groups such as Te Rūnanga o te Arawa, the Ahipara Māori Committee, the Panguru Development Trust, Te Uri o Hau Settlement Trust, the Ngāti Hine Forestry Trust, Mangatawa Papamoa Block Inc., which is in my area, Ngāti Awa Group Holdings, which is in my area as well, Te Rūnanga o Kirikiriroa, and the Ngāti Whātua o Ōrākei Māori Trust Board.

There are probably over 300 properties of this kind, where land is leased from iwi. Other iwi have also expressed an interest in the management of State housing within their rohe. Within my electorate of Waiariki, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa has indicated a desire to purchase all of the corporation’s stock in and around Whakatāne, so that is great.

I acknowledge our iwi who have stepped up and stepped into this gap, picking up the responsibility to care for their own and to care properly for our whānau. We hope the Housing New Zealand Corporation continues to trust in their leadership and vision in the development of housing in those rohe. Kia ora tātou.

I very much look forward to the post-election environment. If New Zealanders decide to put John Key back in as Prime Minister and he chooses the next Minister of Housing, that Minister will oversee the Housing New Zealand Corporation as it insulates its very last home, probably in about 2013 or 2014. Out of 69,000 State houses across this country, the Housing New Zealand Corporation will be insulating the last home that requires it in a couple of years’ time. We have about 2,500 to insulate next year and about 2,100 to do the year after that. In the financial year before this one, we did more than 8,400 insulations in just over 12 months, which is quite stunning when one thinks about it.

Te Ururoa Flavell raised the issue of the condition of State houses. The Housing New Zealand Corporation has a commitment to increasing the conditions of its State housing stock, rather than growing the State house numbers as much as under the previous Government. It has decided, with the Government’s support, to upgrade the State houses. The way the corporation has bitten off that challenge has been a huge credit to it. We have seen State houses with their bedroom numbers increased, we have seen State houses that had fallen into serious disrepair bowled, removed, or sold and replaced with new houses, and, of course, we have seen the insulation scheme, which has been very, very important. The member was quite right in saying that in delivering State housing, we are delivering a large proportion of it to Māori families.

One of the other issues to consider when we look at the State housing asset, if you like—the actual houses out there—is that about 27,000 State houses out of the 69,000 are essentially inappropriate. About 42,000 houses are about right and we can keep and maintain them, but about 27,000 have to be upgraded or sold and replaced, so that we maintain the State housing stock. Essentially, the problem is that many of those houses are three-bedroom houses, when Māori families are often much larger and need four or five-bedroom houses. Many people live alone these days, and they simply want a one or two-bedroom home. So we have thousands of houses that are the wrong size. Then we have a large number of houses that are in the wrong locality and need to be disposed of, and we need to build or purchase replacement State houses in the right locality. We also have some State houses that are in a serious state of disrepair. On that side of it, the Housing New Zealand Corporation is very focused on bringing the State housing up to what it calls a level that is fit for purpose, so that no longer among the 69,000 State houses do we have 27,000 of them not fit for purpose. Instead, the whole State housing stock will be fit for purpose. That will take a long time indeed, but certainly the train has left the station.

We are also looking at tenancies, and the Housing New Zealand Corporation is very focused on this issue. On 1 July any new tenant signing up with the corporation will no longer be getting a State house for life. It was a Labour Party principle that if someone got a State house, they got it for life. It did not matter if they won Lotto or their circumstances had improved. It did not matter even if they had had six kids who had all left home 25 years ago, and the tenant was left with five bedrooms and just themselves there, the Labour Party told them to keep the five-bedroom State house, even though it was just one person on a quarter-acre section who was sick of mowing the lawns. That situation has ended. From 1 July any new tenant coming into State housing will have their circumstances reviewed every 3 years. That will mean that those families whom Mr Flavell talked about who are on the waiting list and who really need a State home will be able to move into one, because those families who no longer need a State home will transition out of them and into renting in the wider social housing sector, private rental, or perhaps even homeownership. Essentially, we will have a housing continuum there so we can help more people on the waiting list. That is a very important point indeed, and I thank the member for his support of that.

Report noted.

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