Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill

Last evening I was giving some reasons—good reasons, I think—why New Zealand First would be unable to support this bill. I said that it is unwise to confuse social objectives with property investment objectives in non-government organisations, because the outcome would be risky, uncertain, and unlikely to be unacceptable in practice. The State is better to provide social housing directly and not rely so much on the NGO sector. I said there is a place for them, and that should be preserved, but it is a discrete and relatively small area of need.

The bill provides for income-related rent subsidies for community organisations, but we think that has far too many pitfalls, mainly concerning issues around accountability and consistency in operation. The bill also contains new provisions for moving people out of State houses if they are found to be financially able to do so, as though somehow that is necessarily the right thing to do. For some it may be a good thing, but, as I have indicated, there may be good reasons for people to choose to remain in State house rentals, and New Zealand First does not see any reason why they should not do so. I fear that people who have such good reasons will be nudged out of State rentals, when it is not the best option for them. The Government seems to think that if they can afford to own properties, they should be moved out of a rental home, when there are many other issues for such people in relation to their priorities and their social needs. Affordability is in any event a subjective exercise, to be assessed on the particular issues for the individual concerned, and should not be some clinical objective exercise.

I note that the bill will allow Housing New Zealand to alter rents for State houses and to change the nature of the tenancy as the tenant’s circumstances change, and to forcibly obtain information from those people. There are several examples in the bill. I will read a couple of them, which gives a flavour. It says, for example, that the bill would “enable Housing HNZ to investigate the circumstances of”—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.

Can I be the first to congratulate the Minister of Housing this morning on the changed paradigm in housing that he is bringing forward. It is something that the community housing sector is supporting—in fact, even promoting—because it has said for a long time now that we need to make sure that people looking for housing have a significant choice right across the board, not just Housing New Zealand properties. Currently, the paradigm is that people needing housing will go either to the Ministry of Social Development or to Housing New Zealand. If they go to the Ministry of Social Development, they get a subsidy of about $3,000 or $4,000 a year on their housing and they rent privately. We are delighted that the private sector actually provides housing in New Zealand. I do not know why the Labour Party attacked the private housing sector. Quite frankly, if that sector left the market tomorrow, the Government would be left with billions and billions and billions of dollars’ worth of required investment. So we are glad that landlords provide housing in New Zealand.

Or the needy family would go to Housing New Zealand, and there they get a subsidy of about $6,000 or $8,000 a year. So, naturally, people go to Housing New Zealand—because the subsidy is twice as much as what they would get on the accommodation supplement—line up, and then you get the waiting list. Under Labour we saw the waiting list hit 10,000 people a year—10,000 people a year—because everyone wants a State house. Furthermore, once you are in a State house—currently, under the Labour Party principles, anyway—you do not leave; you have it for life. It does not matter whether you took on a four-bedroom house with three kids and a husband. Twenty years down the track, when all the children have left and your husband has passed away, at the moment you can rattle around in a four-bedroom State house, even while a needy family of six is languishing on the waiting list for 10 years. The Labour Party thinks that is fine. Well, we are saying no. We believe that we can transition that single person into a smaller State home or into a community house.

I am saying that it is good that the Minister has changed this paradigm, where once you either lined up at the Ministry of Social Development or lined up at Housing New Zealand, preferred Housing New Zealand, and had a State house for life. Now, of course, we are going to see people go to the Ministry of Social Development. They will have the opportunity to go into private housing with the accommodation supplement, into State housing with income-related rents, or into the third sector, which is a great thing because in the community housing sector care they wrap around services for mental health clients and they wrap around services for the disabled, for the very young, and for the very old. And for those young mums they care for they provide budgeting services, and sometimes there are medical visits as well.

We are going to be supporting the community housing sector with both capital—significant capital—and cash flow, the income-related rents, so that we can provide housing right across the board: the private rental market with the accommodation supplement, income-related rents in State housing, and income-related rents in the community housing sector. We are giving tenants choices right across the country. I support this Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, and I support the Minister in taking the courage to actually deliver to New Zealand what the community housing sector has been pushing for and promoting for years.

The reason, Mr Heatley, that the Housing New Zealand waiting list hit 10,000 when Labour was in Government was that your lot hocked off 14,000 State houses to your developer mates when you were in Government in the 1990s. So let us be clear where the blame lies for the waiting list. Unlike National, Labour does not hide the need by slashing the waiting list.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: You had 9 years.

We did have 9 years. We managed to rebuild nearly 9,000 State houses in those years, Dr Smith.

This bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, signals the beginning of the end for Housing New Zealand, and, let us be clear, that is what this bill is doing. National’s reviewable tenancy policy is an utter disgrace. You can tell that National MPs do not appreciate how privileged they are to enjoy security in terms of their tenancy, in terms of the fact that they have a home, and they clearly do not understand that not every family in this country has that privilege. They take it for granted.

The reason housing is so crucial is that it provides stability. Families can put their roots down. They can get involved in their local communities. They do not have to live in fear of not knowing where they are going to live from week to week, from year to year, of not knowing what schools their kids will be going to, and of how many times they are going to be transient. Transience is one of the biggest killers of educational achievement in this country. Too many families in this country do not have the stability that they need and that Phil Heatley and Dr Nick Smith take for granted. They do not have it. They are growing up in households that are transient, and that is bad for our country.

What we have in this country is one Government department that has the ability to provide the stability that families need—one—and that is Housing New Zealand. We have a unique opportunity to do something incredibly important for families through a Government department, and the National Government is stripping that away. What an incredibly cruel thing to do: to strip that away from the one Government department that can provide the crucial element of stability that is missing from so many children’s lives in this country.

Reviewable tenancies are a cruel solution to fix what is a non-problem. This is a non-existent problem. In 2011, I have to point out, Phil Heatley said that it would apply only to new tenants, and that he would exclude the elderly and the infirm from that because it would be distressing for them to know that they would have to go through that process. Well, that is gone now, apparently. We knew back then. We said 3 years ago that it would only be a matter of time before that was extended to everyone, and that is exactly what has happened.

This is a non-problem because Housing New Zealand tenants were already being reviewed annually for their eligibility for the income-related rent subsidy, and, where their circumstances had changed, tenancy managers—remember those; we used to have people who actually looked after and developed relationships with these families—would work with that family to move them on, and, overwhelmingly, they did. When I talk to tenancy managers, do you know what they said was the single biggest issue in terms of moving those families on? It was not that they refused to move, like the National Government has tried to tell us. It was that they had nowhere to move to—nowhere to move to. The National Government is saying “How dare they have the audacity to not want to be homeless! How dare they dig in and say they don’t want their kids living in a garage!”. They have nowhere to go. Fix the issue of housing supply, and this problem goes away, and in a way that does not undermine the stability of every family living in a Housing New Zealand house currently, particularly where there are children in those families.

The other thing this does is scare tenants away from taking on extra hours at work, because they do not know what that is going to do to their eligibility for a home. So where in the past they could go to their tenancy manager and say: “For 2 months I’ve got more work; let’s discuss it.”, and know that that was not going to lead to them being evicted, now they do not have that security. So people are going to turn down hours at work for fear of losing their home, for fear of being made homeless, and the National Party expects us to believe that this is a good policy.

As I said before, we do not have tenancy managers any more at Housing New Zealand. When Phil Heatley was the Minister of Housing he changed the eligibility for State housing so that it went from your inability to find housing to your ability to find housing. The test changed, and it seemed like a small change at the time, but let us be clear about what it did.

What it meant was that the solo mother I met who went to Housing New Zealand was told that the best thing she could do—because she technically had the ability to find housing now; that test had changed—was to stop paying her rent in the private rental she was in and get herself evicted, and then she would be eligible for a Housing New Zealand property. That is the scheme that Phil Heatley put in place; that is the scheme that the Hon Dr Nick Smith is continuing here. Or what about the homeless man in the shelter in Auckland? He was told that he was considered housed because he was in the night shelter. That is the Housing New Zealand policy that this Government has brought in. It is cruel, it is callous, and it is all part of a plan to destroy the tradition of social housing in this country, and this bill continues that. Let us be very clear that that is exactly what this bill does.

I now want to come to the issue of the extension of the income-related rent subsidy to the community housing sector. Yes, this is something the sector has been asking for for a long time. Again, let us be clear. The money that has been provided in this Budget, when it is fully rolled out, will cover less than 20 percent of those properties that are currently owned by the community housing sector and are providing social housing. The sector currently provides around 5,000 houses, and 17 percent will qualify for this. That is all the money that there is. That is not even considering any new housing. Phil Heatley goes on about them being able to do much, much more in the area of social housing. Well, Mr Heatley, you have not even provided enough money to cover what they already do. In fact, less than 20 percent of what they already do is covered by this.

Annette King asked a very important question of the Minister last night. She asked whether the reviewable tenancies policy is going to apply to those tenants who are receiving an income-related rent subsidy and who are now going to be housed by the community housing sector. We had the answer in the New Zealand Herald this morning: “A spokeswoman said this would include tenants in housing owned by community groups ‘wherever the Government is supporting them through income-related rents’.” So, yes, if someone is on an income-related rent in a community housing social provider home, when they reach market rent the provider is going to have to evict those tenants.

I do not know whether the Hon Dr Nick Smith has met with many of these providers yet; I know Phil Heatley did, and he knows how strongly that sector believes in secure tenancies—how strongly that sector believes in the stability that secure tenancies provide. I note, again from the New Zealand Herald today, that “Community Housing Aotearoa co-chairwoman Lisa Woolley said her own agency, Vision West Trust in West Auckland, had a policy of ‘long-term tenancies’. ‘It’s all about making sure the family is stable, connected to their community, that their children are going to the same schools.’ ” What a cruel blow for a sector that has been calling for the extension of the income-related rent subsidy for a long time to then be told that alongside that it has to implement a dreadful, callous policy of evicting tenants—evicting tenants—when they reach a market rent. Let me give you an example.

Take someone with a mental health issue. Phil Heatley thought it was OK to evict people with mental health issues. In fact, he relished it. He relished it. He relished evicting mental health tenants. I had a tenancy manager say to me that when they had a mental health patient who went into crisis, and the neighbours rang them to say that this person was going a bit crazy, they used to call an ambulance. Now they call a police car. That is the difference. The tenancy manager said that when the ambulance or the mental health advocate turned up at the property, the neighbours would say: “What can we do to help?”. When a police officer turns up, they say: “How can we get rid of this person from our community?”. That is the current situation we have.

I come back to the example of a community housing provider that supports people with mental health issues. It provides wraparound support, and I completely agree that it will do a better job than Housing New Zealand does of providing support for tenants with mental health issues. The provider gets that person to a point where they are well enough to take on extra hours at work, where they are well enough to start working full-time, and then that person no longer qualifies for the income-related rent subsidy. But that provider knows that the minute that wraparound support is not there, that person is going to go backwards. Well, the National Party says: “Evict them. We’ve fixed the problem. It’s OK.” What we know, and what the community housing sector knows, is that it is not that simple. Just because someone is doing better does not mean it is always going to be the case—that wraparound support needs to be there.

The community housing sector has said for a long time it does not want to do the Government’s job for it. It wants to be in partnership with the Government—doing it as well as, not instead of, the Government. What we see with this legislation is the Government saying “Well, you can do our job for us now because we no longer see a serious role for the State in providing social housing.” An effective partnership between the Government and the community housing sector would see a strategic farming out of tenancies, basically. We would see tenancies being transferred to organisations that deal with specialist needs in social housing—whether that be dealing with the elderly, whether that be dealing with formerly homeless people or at-risk youth, or whether that be dealing with mental health patients—as the Government looks for providers that can do that in a way that Housing New Zealand cannot and strategically moves those tenancies over, or those properties over, instead of what we are seeing here, which is holus-bolus just shoving 12,000 houses and evicting 3,000 people.

I do not think the National Government realises that it can evict as many people from Housing New Zealand properties as it wants, but they do not just disappear. Those people have to go somewhere. They do not just disappear into the ether because the Hon Dr Nick Smith has evicted them from a Housing New Zealand property. Fix the problem of housing supply and all these non-problems that we are trying to fix in this bill go away. This is a cruel and callous piece of legislation, but it is legislation we would expect from this Government.

What the member resuming her seat, Moana Mackey, has not taken into account is the previous bill, which is addressing exactly that issue. It is interesting that Labour members are railing against this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, and wringing their hands in the way that socialists have become so accustomed to doing, yet this morning on the news Dr Russell Wills, the Children’s Commissioner, was commending this Government for the suite of things that it has announced in this Budget, and particularly mentioning the work that we are doing around social housing. Labour members seem to think that in keeping people beholden, their “one size fits all, we have the size and we will make the people fit into it” model is the only way that things should be. My question to them is this: if we keep doing what we have always done, will we keep getting what we have always got? It is something that those people seem to argue about. They argue about it when they are in Opposition, and do nothing about it when they are in Government, which is pretty much why—a lot of hand-wringing, absolutely, and a lot of tsk tsk’ing over the chardonnay.

This bill will provide opportunities for a place like Northland, where iwi providers have been very eager to get into social housing, but under the current model it simply is not economically viable. With the opportunities that this bill will present, it provides an opportunity for iwi to take ownership over social housing. In the broadest context it provides for greater flexibility and provides far more wraparound ability for people to provide the services that they know people need. The idea that the Government is the only one that can do that is why the Labour members are sitting there languishing, and sort of rolling out these policies of old with their new nuanced membership. They have gone off target. What they say does not resonate. There was no greater indication of that than yesterday’s leaders’ speeches. Did we not see an absolute contrast? I wonder who wrote David Shearer’s speech. I think it was David Cunliffe—I think it was David Cunliffe.

Surely this is about the housing. It is not about who owns it. It is about who can provide it and meet the needs of those who are the most vulnerable and who are in need. As Dr Russell Wills said this morning, this is a positive move. This is about showing support where it is needed. I commend it to the House.

I understand the next call is a split call.

The way that Budgets usually work is that a whole lot of documents get dumped on us, and we and our staff ferret away for a wee while to find out where the nuggets are—where the secrets really are—that the Government has hidden amongst the figures. But you do not to look very far in this Budget in terms of this bill, the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill, because it is actually in the press release that Dr Nick Smith put out. At the end of the first page of his press release around this policy, it says in a very simple sentence: “The review of tenancies will be undertaken with common sense.” We all know that Dr Nick Smith and common sense are mutually exclusive. They just do not work together. So when Dr Nick Smith says that the review of tenancies will be undertaken with common sense, we know that that means in English that the National Government will stuff this up—it will stuff this up.

What it wants to do, as many speakers on this side of the House have said, is, over a number of years, evict 3,000 people from their State homes—3,000 people from their State homes. That is 3,000 families from State homes, and they will be from right around the country, including in Sam Lotu-Iiga’s electorate, and including in my electorate. There will be many, many people from right around the country who will find themselves being evicted from a State home. This continues the trend of Dr Nick Smith running things into the ground—running things into the ground. He was not happy enough with running ACC into the ground, creating a huge crisis there. He was not happy with that. Dr Nick Smith was not happy with taking the wrecking ball to local government. So now that he is back in Cabinet, reformed, he is back and he is taking the wrecking ball to Housing New Zealand.

This is a very serious issue, especially in my electorate of Mana, because there are a lot of State housing tenants in my electorate. The issue of Housing New Zealand matters—of waiting lists, of maintenance, of the supply of enough housing—is a major issue and probably takes up half the time of my electorate staff. They will be very worried at what the Government is proposing in this bill—very worried—because it continues a trend from National of taking the hammer to Housing New Zealand. We talk about Nick Smith undertaking these measures with common sense. Was it common sense from this Government to close down the Housing New Zealand office in Porirua, to shut the door to the public, to the tenants, to the thousands of the corporation’s tenants in Porirua? Was that common sense, Dr Nick Smith? Was that common sense, I ask the National Party? Was it common sense that Phil Heatley started an 0800 number, which no one could get an answer from. No one would answer the phone. It took minutes, if not hours, for people to get someone just to simply answer the phone. Was that common sense from the Government? If that was common sense from the Government in those two areas, what can we expect from the Government in terms of evicting 3,000 people out of State homes?

Is it common sense the way that this Government is undertaking its earthquake-strengthening programme? Is that common sense? But what we have got here is another effort from Nick Smith to run Housing New Zealand into the ground. This Government does not like Housing New Zealand. Let us make that clear. It would prefer to wash its hands of what it probably considers to be the State house problem. That is what is happening here. The Government is washing its hands of the State house problem. It has closed down the offices, so no longer can someone in my electorate simply go along to someone behind the counter and ask: “What is up with my house? What is up with my maintenance?”. There is no customer service there—no customer service whatsoever. There is no customer service in Porirua, at all. So what they have to do now is ring up Phil Heatley’s 0800 number, wait for at least 45 minutes to get someone to answer the phone, and then it takes months—

💬 Hon Member: Or longer.

—or longer—to get something as simple as a broken window fixed. But, no, when tenants are 2 weeks in arrears with their rent, the corporation comes down like a tonne of bricks—it comes down like a tonne of bricks. If you want to wreck something, it is obvious that Nick Smith is the person to get in to do the job—absolutely. ACC was not enough, and local government was not enough. Housing New Zealand is next in his sights and that is a very, very sad thing for the people of New Zealand.

The Green Party will be opposing the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill.

💬 Mike Sabin: Oh, surely not.

No surprise. Although we have some lukewarm support for a couple of aspects of this bill, we are strongly opposed to many of the measures within it. This bill establishes renewable tenancies. I usually like the word “renewable”, but not in this situation. It shifts housing needs-assessments from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development and extends income-related rents to community housing organisations, but, sadly, also undermines their autonomy. It attempts to pretend that the Government is actually doing something about the problem of cold, damp housing in this country, when in fact it is just providing window dressing. Renewable tenancies: evictions by another name. The evictions of 1,000 people in the first year are heralded by this bill, and 3,000 in total. That is into a housing crisis, where in Auckland alone it is estimated that we are 12,000 houses short already. In South Auckland, the average annual turnover in private rental housing is four families a year, because they cannot afford to meet the market rentals. That is where a young pregnant woman was found living in her car because she was earning a few dollars over the threshold for Housing New Zealand housing and could not find a private rental that she could afford. Shame on this Government.

As my colleague Holly Walker noted in her very compelling speech last night, which I recommend to everyone, much of the harm of private rentals comes from the churn that we see because people cannot afford the rent or their landlords decide to get somebody else in and they have to move. This means that children end up moving between schools and cannot become part of a learning culture. People lose their social bonds and the connections that come from sharing your vegetables with your neighbours, that enable you to get by that little bit better, and that come from when people develop community. I have been a renter most of my life and I have moved, on average, twice a year, which is just that reality of being a renter. I can attest to that loss of community and the high cost of moving—it costs a lot to move and re-establish yourself. That is money that is going to be lost from the poorest families in our community, the people who can least afford it.

This bill is a bloody travesty. Still, this Government seems to have forgotten the point of State housing, and I would like to remind it that it was a Liberal administration under Richard Seddon that first recognised the need for State housing. You brought in State housing—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker, not you. The National Government—a Liberal Government—was the first Government to bring in State housing, because it recognised the growing reports of extortionate rents and squalid living conditions—

💬 Holly Walker: Sounds familiar.

—familiar—and it recognised a need for the State to provide a response. When Mr Sabin says we are whingeing about this and being liberals opposing it and we are not acknowledging your other bill to bring in extended urban limits and provide new housing, I would remind you that in the 1950s the National Government opposed the development of State houses on the fringes, recognising that development in the inner city made more sense and was better for people’s sustainability. This Government has lost its way. You have lost your values.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker, not you, of course. This National Government has lost its way and is forgetting the people who most need its support.

There is one aspect of this bill that could potentially provide some help, and that is extending income-related rents to social housing. We recognise that social housing does do the job well. Wraparound services are really positive. However, I provide three caveats on this. One is that it needs to be in addition. I acknowledge that this Government lost 300 homes from the State sector for the first time.

💬 Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: What’s $30 million going to do? In addition.

Three hundred houses makes a difference. That is 300 families, Mr Lotu-Iiga. It is sad to see them lose them.

I am proud to take the final call in this first reading around the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill this morning. I, first of all, just want to quote from the Housing Corporation Act 1974 on one of the key functions of the corporation. Section 18(2) states: “The Corporation’s functions include—(a) providing rental housing, principally for those who need it most:”—for those who need it most. I just want to say that in acknowledging all the contributions, those who are opposing this bill and those who are supporting this bill, at the end of the day we all agree that where there is need, and for those who need it most, we should meet that need. We have been holding each other accountable about the things we have done in the past, but we are now in the present, and heading into the future.

What our communities want to hear is what this bill will do to make a difference. It is really clear when we have gone out into our communities. I was over at the Māngere Housing New Zealand office, meeting with the new team leader there, Stacey Herbert. We talked about the issues and the challenges.

I went out to Monte Cecilia Housing Trust over at Māngere. We went out to some of the boarding houses. We began to see some of the challenges that they were facing. I know and we know that the needs are there. What this bill is trying to do is this very thing: it is not trying to kick people out, it is not trying to say that if you have got a need that we will not meet that; what it is doing is, in one sense, providing for those who need it most. There is a waiting list there. I talked to Stacey Herbert, and there are many who are in great need who cannot access those homes—the very homes and the very needs that the Opposition is talking about.

So what will this bill do? Well, the reviewable tenancy provision inside this bill for all tenants means that those who do not need those homes can now move on, to provide for those who do. That is the simple fact of what it is trying to do. We have been accused of being the right-wing Tories, the people who do not care for people. In fact, they have called us the rich to the poor, while many of us, if not all of us, have come from backgrounds where we have had to make a living and work hard to be where we are at today. We know what it takes—we know what it takes. For those on the Opposition who may not have read it, there is a report called Home and Housed. It is a vision for social housing in New Zealand. What it clearly says is this: “Shelter is one of the most basic human needs, but a home is much more than the place where we hang our hat:”.

In 2009 there was an accommodation review, an opportunity to see those who could move on. Around about 2,500 tenants were actually reviewed and researched. They were asked whether they could afford the income threshold to meet the opportunities for homeownership. Out of 2,500 only five were able to afford that. So what do we do, then? Do we then allow them to stay where they are? No, what we want to do is provide opportunities. Those who were on the Housing Shareholders’ Advisory Group included people like Alan Jackson, who was the chair; Major Campbell Roberts from the Salvation Army; Andrew Body, who is a director of Crown Fibre Holdings; Martin Udale, an independent consultant in housing; Diane Robertson, the head of Auckland City Mission; Brian Donnelly, the executive director of the New Zealand Housing Foundation; and Paul White, from Torea Tai Consultants. All of those people work in communities and some of them are part of the Salvation Army, and this was their recommendation: that we should have reviewable tenancies for all tenants—for all tenants.

💬 Moana Mackey: But you’re not, you’re doing 17 percent.

I want to finish off with this, Mrs Mackey: we act with common sense. We are not going to go out and kick people out on to the streets, as you have said.

💬 Moana Mackey: You are.

We do not. Why? Because we know—I know the community that I work with. I know the people who are there. That is the not the intent of this. What this is for is to give people the sense of hope of a future, of an opportunity. We know about transience. In my community I have worked in we have seen the impact that it has. But here is a greater thing, Mrs Mackey: what about the opportunities for homeownership for those who are transient? What about the opportunities for them to do better for themselves, to stop true transience?

💬 Moana Mackey: You’re not doing anything about that.

I commend this bill and I look forward to its hearing at the Social Services Committee. I hope that Mrs Mackey will second herself on to the committee and we will have a robust discussion, because at the moment we have not heard a lot from some of the other Auckland MPs. We look forward to that. I commend this bill to the House.

I move, That the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill be reported back to the House by 1 October 2013.

Motion agreed to.