Estimates Debate — Housing

Members, we now have the Minister of Housing. The Minister is available from just before 5 to just before 6.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s my pleasure as the chair of the Social Services sand Community Committee to lead off this debate for Vote Housing and Urban Development for the 2023-24 Estimates. The Hon Dr Megan Woods, the Hon Barbara Edmonds, and the Hon Marama Davidson appeared before the select committee to discuss the Vote. Thanks to the Ministers, respective board chairs, chief executive officers, and officials for appearing and responding to written and oral questions.

The Minister of Housing is responsible for all appropriations under Vote Housing. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, administers the Vote. HUD is responsible for the strategy, the policy, funding, monitoring, and regulation of New Zealand’s housing and urban development system. Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities, or KO, manages the public housing estate and their tenancies. KO is also responsible for planning, coordinating, and undertaking housing development to create a mix of public, affordable, and marketing housing, and it administers the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund.

The most significant change to the Vote is the $5.24 billion increase to the borrowing capacity of KO. In November 2022, the Government announced that KO would no longer be able to borrow money directly from the private market to build and renovate public housing. We asked what analysis had been undertaken of the forecast debt being taken on by KO. The Minister informed us that KO is undertaking very long-term financial planning, looking 60 years ahead to ensure its financial stability.

As at March 2023, there were 24,000 applicants on the housing register. This is a 7.7 percent decrease from March 2022. Budget 2023 proposes funding of $1.76 billion to purchase and provide public housing and related support services. The Minister noted that one of the consequences of previous Governments’ selling public housing assets was the loss of affordable rentals on the market. The Government is working with community housing providers, iwi, and councils to increase the supply of affordable rental housing. This is critical to reducing the public housing wait-list.

The Government aims to have a supply of 81,000-plus public homes by 30 June 2024. The Minister told us she is confident that the Government’s target will be met. She highlighted that through its housing delivery system project, KO is currently averaging 105 days to build new houses. The Minister explained that this is half the time taken for a standard construction. KO is ultimately aiming to reduce construction time to 65 days.

Over the last five Budgets, approximately $1.1 billion has been allocated to Māori housing. We heard that this funding has increased capacity for Māori to build houses through Māori housing providers. This includes preparing Māori community housing providers to prepare their own land for development.

We also heard that about 1.5 percent of KO homes are fully accessible and that it has retrofitted nearly 8,000 homes to make them more accessible. Building contracts from 2021 are being completed now, and she expects the proportion of fully accessible new builds to increase.

We heard that the Housing Acceleration Fund provides $3.6 billion between years 2021 and 2026 to upgrade infrastructure for housing development. We asked whether these infrastructure upgrades helped to prevent the flood damage in early 2023. The Minister told us that Kāinga Ora ensures that its developments account for necessary infrastructure upgrades so that public housing built on flood plains would be more resilient during severe weather events.

The Social Services and Community Committee recommends that the appropriations for the year ended 30 June 2024 for Vote Housing and Urban Development be accepted. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. We had a good session in the Social Services and Community Committee, and I thank the chair of the select committee for that update.

I’ve got a number of questions which we’ll canvass in the first hour, but I just want to pick up on something that the chair of the committee said. I think she said that we heard from the Minister that by 2024, the aim was to have 81,000—I think she said 81,000—

Angie Warren-Clark: Approximately—yeah.

CHRIS BISHOP: —approximately 81,000 people in public housing.

Angie Warren-Clark: No, 81,000 houses.

CHRIS BISHOP: 81,000 houses?

Angie Warren-Clark: Yes.

CHRIS BISHOP: OK—all right. Well, I was going to ask, if that’s true, why—well, actually, I can ask that because I’m just looking at the Budget documents which we’re examining, which is Vote Housing and Urban Development, at page 111 of the Estimates of Appropriations for the social services and community sector, and the number of tenancies subsidised by income-related rent subsidy (IRRS) will be at least—the Budget standard for 2022-23, so the year just gone, was estimated to be 75,500. The estimated actual was 74,700. The Budget standard for 2023-24, which is the year that the member is talking about, is 77,500. That’s quite a disparity between the 81,000 mentioned by the member and what the Budget actually appropriates. So maybe an initial question for the Minister is: is that 81,000 figure correct, because this the purchase of public housing provision, non-departmental output expenses, and the number of tenancies subsidised by an income-related rent subsidy. So anyway, perhaps we can hear a little more about that.

The other thing I wanted to raise just as an initial starting point was in relation to the emergency housing reset, which was funded in Budget 2022, and it provides, from memory, over $300 million for that. Now, my figures might be slightly out of date, but I asked the Minister a written question around this maybe six weeks or eight weeks or so ago. Very little of that money has so far been drawn down, and the answer I’ve got says that $620,000 has been spent on the reset in the early stage and another $1.6 million contracted. But that was a year or so ago that it was announced—in fact, it’s over a year or so ago, or at least the money was appropriated a year-or-so ago. We had to wait till the end of last year to find out exactly what was happening.

So I suppose there are two questions. The first question is around the IRRS purchase provision, and then the second question is around the emergency housing reset and just what’s happening with that, because not a lot of money has so far been drawn down. A lot of money has been appropriated, but not a lot of money has been drawn down. That’s just an initial starting point. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to acknowledge my three colleagues that are in the House and who will also contribute to this debate, I’m sure. We are very much a housing team. The Hon Barbara Edmonds, the Hon Marama Davidson, and the Hon Willie Jackson are incredibly passionate and dedicated Ministers of housing also, and I’d like to thank them for the work they do.

In regard to the question that Chris Bishop, the member who’s just taken his seat, has posed around the number 81,000 by 2024, in terms of the number: yes, that is correct. The chair of the select committee was correct. At the moment, just for the member’s edification, as of 30 June 2023, we had 79,539 homes, but of course houses and publicly funded houses are two separate things. One, we’re talking about a physical count—roof count—of houses; the other, we’re talking about households that are attracting income-related rent subsidised (IRRS) funding.

It is not uncommon for Kāinga Ora tenants to move in and out of IRRS eligibility at any given point. It may be seasonal work that underlies that in terms of their income and where that sits. So, of course, there will also be houses that are vacant because they are undergoing repair or retrofit. Also, the people that I’ve talked about that are earning enough, of course they’re earning enough to not attract—the IRRS is not a fixed point in time. It can differ over a period of over a year or over a matter of months for people.

In terms of the emergency housing reset, the member is correct. On 12 December 2022, Cabinet agreed to improvements to the emergency housing system. That was the reset and redesign work, and that is providing a pathway to achieving the Government’s long-term vision, with 10 actions over 12 to 18 months. This is obviously a package of work that has a large intersection with Minister Davidson’s work stream, with her being the Associate Minister that is responsible for the Homelessness Action Plan and for the work that the Government is undertaking to address homelessness.

We have seen very much the need for this work to be place-based. We have identified the need for us to be working with local councils, local community groups, and local iwi to make sure that we’ve got those emergency settings fit for purpose for the places that we are working in. So developing regional delivery plans is absolutely critical to getting those alternatives to the emergency housing special needs grant accommodation right, and then, of course, those points that have been identified are Hamilton City and Wellington, where we know that there is need for us to do that. But we are determined to make sure that we are doing that in a way that makes sense for those regions.

I thank the Minister for those answers. This raises a slightly interesting issue, which is what is the Government’s intention when it comes to tenancy reviews, because the reality is there are around 2,500 people in Kāinga Ora houses—and, indeed, in community housing provider houses too, actually—who pay market rents. They earn enough that they can afford to pay market rents.

From memory, I have an answer from the Minister from, I think, a year or so ago saying that tenancy reviews had been paused during COVID—which I think is fair enough—and that no decision had yet been made on restarting them. I think it is true that between 2018 and 2019, there was a process of tenancy reviews. So I wonder if the Minister could give us an update on tenancy reviews and what the Government’s intention is in relation to them.

Thank you. That is work that the Government is undertaking at the moment about how and where you’d restart those tenancy reviews, and you can look to particular cohorts within that. Obviously, that was work that did need to stop during COVID for a number of reasons, not least of all the capacity of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) staff in terms of the fact that we had a number of calls on our MSD staff and reviewing tenancies wasn’t the highest priority during that.

But Ministers, including the Associate Minister for Social Development who has responsibility for the waiting list, the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan—we have been talking amongst Ministers around how it is that we’d get that process of the tenancy review started. For us as Ministers, that is absolutely critical, because if we have tenants who are living in Kāinga Ora homes and earning too much to qualify for the income-related rent subsidy, they of course, by legislation, are not eligible to apply for the accommodation supplement, so the family could indeed be worse off than if they were in the private market and were eligible for an accommodation supplement. So this is work that is under way at the moment.

Thank you to the Minister. This is a slightly more local matter, which I raised in the Parliament last week to the Associate Minister Priyanca Radhakrishnan. It goes to Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funding for homelessness support services, and it may be that the question is better directed at the Hon Marama Davidson. It goes to the Wellington homeless women’s shelter, which I think Ministers and members will be well familiar with. They have told me that they applied for funding for four more beds through HUD and that their funding request was declined on the basis that HUD doesn’t fund homeless facilities or homeless shelters that have communal facilities, and it just struck me as very odd. I mean, the Minister has made reference to the dire need for emergency housing in Wellington. We’re all familiar with that, and the stats speak for themselves.

So I was very surprised to hear that from the Wellington Homeless Women’s Trust. Is that actually HUD policy and, if so, why is that HUD policy? If it is HUD policy, will the Minister seek to change it, because the reality is that communal facilities are common in many shelters around the country, and if that’s the new policy then I think, frankly, we’re going to have some difficulty. Given that $100 million or so was appropriated in last year’s Budget for the Homelessness Action Plan and given they’ve only asked for four more beds, can we get that money out the door and provide those services?

Madam Chair, thank you very much, and thank you for the question. It was alerted to me as well as to the member, and it’s something I’m seeking advice on. What I do know is that all current transitional housing situations that do still have the communal shared spaces of course will be honoured. So I’m just making that clear that we are not going to wind down or remove current communal transitional housing places, and that, yes, I am seeking further guidance and clarity from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) around this proposed new way of working. About the funding that’s available for transitional housing, I was proud that in both Budget 2022 and Budget 2023, we were able to, for example, extend more supported housing and rangatahi transitional housing. But I’m seeking further advice from HUD officials around the proposal. It’s an operational matter—yes—but I am seeking advice.

What I do want to speak to genuinely—and Minister Woods has already touched on this—is that we absolutely need to see more community-led and community-supported housing initiatives and leadership. I am proud that the Government—even just today—has been continuing to announce and lead more places available.

But I really want to acknowledge the work of the Wellington Homeless Women’s Trust. I acknowledge the unique support that they offer to women in the community, particularly, and it’s fantastic. I want to understand more broadly—not just within transitional housing funding and criteria—how we can support and see more of this community leadership to help us all resolve the homelessness problem.

Now, this Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga kaupapa, it’s a beautiful kaupapa. He ataahua te kaupapa, ataahua rawa. [This initiative is beautiful; just amazing.]

We’ve heard of about 1,018 homes being contracted through $213 million of funding, and that’s come through the written questions and some of the oral parliamentary questions that I’ve asked and had answered by the Associate Minister. I’m just trying to understand what are the ownership arrangements for each of those homes, how many will be sold to individual whānau, and, if they are sold, are the moneys received recycled through Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga? Of those that aren’t owned, what are the arrangements that attach to those? Is that income-related rent subsidy - funded and entity-owned, like one of the four iwi prototypes?

I thank the member Tama Potaka for the question, and I understand that he has made a commitment to Māori housing, particularly before he came to Parliament. So I certainly understand his support and his commitment.

A lot of what the member talks about, though, is still being worked through by the various entities. We’ve got, as he well knows, four very, very strong entities in the North and on the East Coast. We’ve got Ka Uruora in Taranaki, led by Jamie Tuuta; Toitū Tairāwhiti, with Willie Te Aho, and our lady down there, Annette; Ngāti Kahungunu, led by Bayden Barber; and Te Pouahi o Te Taitokerau.

Some of the questions that the member asked are on some of the strategies that these trusts are traversing and working through. There’s a lot to take into account. As he knows, there are a lot of obstacles in front of Māori housing providers, so the absolute intricacies on how they roll things out are not finalised. The reality also, as he knows, is that 63 house are built, but the target is 1,000, as he also knows, but within that there are multiple strategies that are being worked out in terms of whānau, in terms of ownership, and in terms of iwi and who moves in, and the different protocols around that. So much of what’s been put forward is fear from that member, but there’s still a lot to be worked out.

In that Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga kaupapa there’s a repairs programme which, actually, I absolutely applaud. That’s a great programme, fixing up houses that are falling over all the way in far-flung places like Te Tairāwhiti and the Whanganui River.

But the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga prototypes are with four different iwi-led organisations, which are, effectively, start-ups in the housing space. I wanted to inquire with the Minister and Associate Minister whether or not there was an attempt to activate Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, and also with those existing iwi—particularly, urban iwi in Auckland—and Māori groups that are already involved in building housing en masse, where I think that there’d be more opportunity to accelerate the numbers of houses that are built for iwi and other communities by iwi and Māori builders.

I’m pleased to say that through the sterling leadership of Minister Jackson, we no longer need to do prototypes. Actually, we have moved beyond prototypes and we can just get on with the mahi of, for the first time, there being a Government commitment—and a billion-dollar commitment—to sit behind that, around how it is that we address issues around Māori housing. In terms of where that will spread to throughout the country, there’s a lot of work under way in various locations, and there are different capacities in different places, ranging right from being incredibly good commercial property developers in some iwi organisations, through to what can be done in papakāinga housing and on whenua Māori.

One of the things that I think the member asked in his previous question—just to add to the very full answer that Minister Jackson gave—is that at the moment, there actually isn’t the provision of income-related rent subsidy public housing within the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga developments, as far as I’m aware, because the aspirations of those iwi and those groups that have come to us are actually to do things differently than that. That is not what they have sought to do.

We are looking at how it is that we can service Māori communities right through from the work that Minister Davidson is leading in homelessness. But the clear aspiration of so many groups we talked to is “What can we do to enable homeownership?”, and that is also a very important string to the bow. What we have in here is the progressive homeownership scheme that is ring-fenced for Māori, because if we’re going to shift rates of homeownership for Māori and for Pasifika, we do need to have dedicated funding pathways, and that is exactly what this Government has done. So affordable rentals are very much what is being seen within a number of the prototypes, but homeownership sits at the heart of the aspiration of many of these communities, and that’s why I’m proud to be a member of a Government that for the first time in New Zealand’s history is backing just that aspiration.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I wish to raise an issue about the Government’s debt and Government loans. In the Estimates, it suggests that this year, the Government will give over $5 billion in loans to Kāinga Ora, which is money to build.

I want to turn to an article that came out a year ago, and it said that this Minister, under the Government, was “warned not to grant any future Budget bids to … Kāinga Ora for a time, after fears of unsustainable debt levels. A leaked document from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development showed spiralling construction costs cause a debt blowout at Kāinga Ora, with fears that”—

Chris Bishop: It’s public—it’s not leaked. It’s been public for a year.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN: —“the Government will be unable to completely repay the increase in debt over the next 60 years.”

Is it acceptable, Minister, that this Government, with a warning about increasing debt levels, has signed off on $5 billion of loans to Kāinga Ora, when we know that it’s unsustainable?

Look, I’m happy to take a short call on that. I do actually agree with the Opposition member Chris Bishop that it’s very hard to call a document that’s sitting on the department’s website “leaked”. I don’t think there’s anything particularly furtive about that document, and that is somewhat of a misrepresentation of that document as well.

But I do just want to address this issue of the lending for Kāinga Ora, because it did change, and it was discussed at this Estimates hearing that of course the debt was transferred back into the net core Crown debt. The reason for that is actually the ability to get a better interest rate so that we can save money for the Crown by bringing in and structuring the debt in the way.

I just want to put some perspective into the comments that the ACT spokesperson for housing has just brought in about that Kāinga Ora’s borrowing of $5.2 billion, added to what it is already—in terms of its existing debt, it will be around $9 billion. Now, this is obviously a large debt, but I want to put this into the perspective of what the balance sheet of Kāinga Ora is. This is an organisation that owns an awfully large amount of property and an awfully large amount of houses, and it has $260 billion in total assets.

So if we have a look at the debt-to-equity ratio of the organisation, we can see that, actually, it is in a very good health, at 3.5 percent. If you stacked Kāinga Ora up against the similar agencies globally that you’d put it against in terms of debt-to-equity ratio looks like, you’d actually see that Kāinga Ora still has a lot of headroom if you put it next to its comparator agencies.

In terms of the document that the member is talking about, she’s actually talking about a very long-term piece of planning that I kicked off as Minister by saying: what does the financial future of Kāinga Ora look like in 50 or 60 years? How do we manage the long-term financial sustainability of an organisation that for too many years has been a political football in terms of its funding? We haven’t seen the adding of public housing, we haven’t seen the maintenance of the existing asset base, and one of the things that I know is that our operational costs at the moment within Kāinga Ora are higher than they would have been if the previous decade had actually had a maintenance programme on its homes. The cost of maintaining an unrenovated retrofitted house is far higher than maintaining one that has been retrofitted or, indeed, that has been redeveloped and is a new build. You carry a far greater operating burden on your balance sheet as an owner of property in those circumstances.

Also, one of the things that I wanted to address in looking at that financial sustainability piece is the way that Kāinga Ora, or Housing New Zealand, was treated as a cash-flow machine. There was over half a billion dollars’ worth of dividends that were extracted from the organisation between 2008 and 2017, so not only was there nil investment; there actually was an extraction of half a billion dollars’ worth of money that could have been reinvested back into redeveloping or maintaining or building new houses. But it wasn’t; it was put in to pay for other things in the consolidated account.

That’s why, as a responsible Minister of Housing, I was keen to look at what the financial sustainability of that organisation looks like over that 60-year time horizon. But I do acknowledge that this set of accounts that we’re seeing in this Budget is the first time that we’ve seen the transfer of that debt back into net core Crown debt, so it looks a little bit different.

I really enjoyed those comments around the aspiration for ownership, particularly across whānau Māori, and using the progressive home ownership (PHO) pathway—that specific Māori PHO pathway. I’m interested to understand how many whānau Māori eventually accessed and used the PHO pathway for homeownership? That’s the first question.

The other one is a pivot towards the income-related rent subsidy (IRRS), which is quite a topical one, and it was mentioned in the select committee recently. There are 27 of 81 community housing providers (CHPs) which are Māori CHPs, but only two of them have around 100 or more IRRS places. I’m wondering what are the messages that the ministerial team—the tag team—are giving to those Māori CHPs in order to access greater numbers of IRRS places, because they’ve had to go through that quite strenuous process of becoming CHPs.

I’m happy to take a first crack at that, and I’m sure Minister Jackson will want to follow up. The reason why those by Māori, for Māori community housing providers (CHPs) have such low numbers of income-related rent subsidy (IRRS) places is because they didn’t exist until our Government was elected, because ours was the first time that we actually had backed the aspirations of Māori organisations to have these by Māori, for Māori solutions.

In fact, in our first few years in Government, we spent a lot of energy, time, and resource building capacity for a number of very strong iwi and Māori organisations to actually become CHPs so they could be in this position. So I want to see those numbers grow. I wish it had been done the decade previously, by a previous Government—that we had had Māori aspiration backed in that way, rather than just left and nothing done about it. So we do want to see that grow.

In terms of the progressive home ownership (PHO) numbers, Minister Jackson may be able to fill us in on the detail, but I’d just like to reiterate the conversation that we had at select committee. We could have filled the PHO numbers by having by Pākehā, for Māori solutions. We could have had existing community housing providers be the providers that offered those progressive home ownership options for Māori. We could have had a number of organisations that wanted to do it, and we could have taken them up on that offer. But, instead, what this Government has been committed to is working with our Māori providers to build the capacity for them to be the organisations that work with their communities to fulfil that aspiration.

So I think we know that in order to build the capacity in the CHP sector so that we could get the hundreds of houses that that receive IRRS funding, we had to be prepared to put in the work. I commend the work that Minister Jackson is doing to work with those organisations to make sure that we can have these solutions, which make sense in our communities.

Can I just tautoko what our Minister of Housing has said. I commend her, plus other Ministers and this Government, in terms of what we have been attempting to do over five years.

As that member Tama Potaka well knows, as he’s been very involved—and I commend him again. Over the years, he has been trying very hard to get our people into the game—and that’s what you’re saying, Minister. We have not been in the game. We’ve had community providers who’ve been shut out altogether, so that member quite rightly points to the minimal amount of providers. But it’s hard for our providers to even get the status to get the credibility, so I just am so proud of the work that this Minister has done and that this Government has done in terms of actually going down the path of a by Māori, for Māori strategy.

I re-emphasise the Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga strategy as one of the most brilliant strategies we have ever seen in terms of housing and Māori housing in the history of this Parliament. I say that because in past years—I’ve just come on as a Māori Housing Minister in the last year. But in past years, Te Puni Kōkiri (TPK) was always separate in terms of our Ministry of Housing. So Te Puni Kōkiri used to just do repairs, fix up this, and fix up that; we had Ministry of Housing who were doing their thing; and we just did not have a coordinated and comprehensive strategy.

The Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga strategy brings together the two entities, and why is that good? It’s because you have Māori officials working with their Pākehā colleagues in terms of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development helping them out in terms of the intricacies with regards to housing Māori, because in terms of housing Māori, you’re not just talking about a house; you’re talking about a community, you’re talking about whakapapa, and you’re talking about whānau. So Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga in 2021, when we came up with $700 million in terms of investment—it was absolutely unprecedented.

The member asks quite appropriate questions, but at the same time he must remember what we’ve already put in place, and we want to build on that. So we built on that $700 million by adding another $200 million in the latest Budget in terms of Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga, which is about getting our people into houses all around the country, but we’re not just looking at the repairs side of things, which was the case very much with TPK.

I’m proud of the coordinated, comprehensive strategy we now have, and we want the flow-on to happen into the areas that that member quite rightly points out. So I thank him for his question. Kia ora.

A question to the Minister in the chair. During our report back and during the hearing, we heard in relation to an imminent announcement in Auckland that was coming. I would be interested for you to talk to us about that, Minister, but I would also be really interested to know about the difference in this model that is being delivered. So I’m interested about the development in terms of its size, in terms of its services, and I’m also interested in the community engagement and the process around that and perhaps around how the community is looking towards this launch. Thank you.

Well, I think there’s two developments in Auckland that are quite different and worth just giving a little bit of information about. One that I think is a particularly exciting development is at Highbury Triangle. This is a very large development of several hundred apartments, but it is dedicated housing for our older New Zealanders—for people that are in the position of needing to rent in their retirement—and how is it that we can provide warm, safe shelter for these people. It’s four stories, I believe—just off the top of my head—but it has lift access, so all of the units within this are universal design so that it is suitable for our elderly population.

I think it is incredibly important that when we think about our public housing as our population ages, we think about how we make it fit for purpose for those older New Zealanders. I’d just like to put a plug in for a similar development in my own electorate, in the Wigram electorate. This was opened a couple of weeks ago. It’s a 20-unit development. It has solar panels on the roof. It is 20 units. It’s three stories, but, again, has lift access so that all of them can be of a fully universal design. But five of those units also have an extra bed—they’re one-bedroom units, but five of them have an extra bedroom for any carers that need sleepover capacity for the over-50s for whom the complex is reserved.

Angie Warren-Clark: Over 50s?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yeah, I know—frightening as that is to the chair of the select committee. So we can see that there are new ways of thinking about public housing and how we can make this really fit for purpose for our communities.

I think that once you start building at scale, like this Government is—when you are building the most public houses and adding the most public houses of any Government since the 1950s—you can start thinking about exactly the kind of housing that your community needs.

The other one, of course, is Greys Avenue, which is a housing development that has been going on in that part of Auckland for some time now, and that is going to have intensive, wraparound support for those tenants that will be there. It very much echoes a complex that Ministers Edmonds and Davidson and I were at this morning in terms of the opening here in Wellington of a development in Rolleston Street. It’s an 80-unit development, and 20 of them are intensively supported housing with live-in support for care workers. So we can start to think about how it is that we do those things differently.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. My question is actually for Minister Davidson around the Homelessness Action Plan. We had an exchange in the House a couple of months ago or so, in which we were talking about the $100 million appropriated in Budget 2022. Very little of that money has been spent, and I want to know from the Minister what is the barrier in getting the money out the door. I can see she’s rising to her feet, but just give me 30 seconds, Minister, to make my point, which is that I know, as she does, that we are passionate about ending homelessness in New Zealand.

The Minister’s basic point a while ago seemed to be that the programmes had to be designed, that it was very important that we do bottom-up initiatives, and that people have got to be involved in the design of them, and that’s all well and good and that’s important to some extent. But a year later, people actually just want the money out the door, and there are variety of different programmes that are working well already. I think of VisionWest Community Trust, and I think of the Wellington Homeless Women’s Trust, which we’ve had a discussion about. So what is the barrier in getting the cash out the door to families and communities that need it? That’s the first point that maybe the Minister can respond to.

I do genuinely thank the member for that question because it allows me to reiterate, once again, that the three initiatives that haven’t yet fully contracted out are brand-spanking-new initiatives that are a completely different way of working from what this Government has ever seen and they do absolutely rely on a relational way of working between the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the community leadership group.

What I would impress upon the member is to not think of equating the progress with the actual contracting system of Government. So for all of the work that needs to be happening behind He Ara Hiki Mauri, which is that the actual funds have already been devolved out to Te Matapihi and Arohanui ki te Tāngata—so those are Māori and community housing networks working together—that has been devolved out, and then, from there, they are leading the design and the authority to then further contract out the services. They are still designing that, but that heads of agreement has already been signed and it is sitting with the Māori authority—the Māori organisation.

With the supported housing and rangatahi youth space—oh my goodness, we have never done this before. I am closely connected with the providers, who are going to be delivering this completely new service in a completely different way, and the progress is absolutely happening in the way it should be happening. I have met with those providers who are already tagged for being able to do this work, and just only a few days ago, so I’m closely linked in. We are working with those with rangatahi expertise who are going to deliver the supported rangatahi part of the Budget.

With the outreach part of the Budget, we have actually already announced and contracted in, for example, the member’s community, at Kōkiri Marae, and also Whangārei. So the work is happening, and they have been helping us to continue that work.

Then, with the rangatahi transitional housing—my goodness! Again, we’ve been able to—actually, because that was an already existing initiative, we’ve been able to almost fully make sure that that Budget funding is either provisionally allocated or contracted, or has been spent already. But that’s, again, because it is an existing initiative that is set up, ready to go.

I’m really proud that a Government is attempting and doing new ways of working. The work for those three new ways of working is happening. We need to not confuse contracting money and spending money to equate with “the work isn’t happening”. The work is absolutely progressing, and it is going to be delivered by the community, who have designed it. I think this Government needs to be really proud of that progress.

Well, we can agree to disagree. But, with respect, contracting’s one thing, but getting money out the door is another thing, and, actually, the work doesn’t happen unless you spend the money. So anyway—

Hon Marama Davidson: No, I disagree.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, work’s fine, but unless people are actually being paid to look after people who are in need, then there’s not a lot of point in doing it. So anyway, I’d just make that as an aside.

My colleague Tama Potaka has some other questions, but I just wanted to ask the Ministers generally: what work, if any, is being done on housing for prisoners who leave prison? I think one of the great disgraces of New Zealand public policy is that people who leave prison far too often go into insecure housing, and that is a big contributor and driver of their ending up back in prison. The wider issue of course is we need to build more houses—that of course is fundamental—but clearly there is a massive social need around prisoners who finish their sentence and exit prison and who, unfortunately, far too often end up in emergency housing motels, sometimes with people they’ve been in prison with. They’re placed in vulnerable situations in which they’re subject to temptation and they end up committing crime and end up back in prison. The cycle repeats, and it’s a disgrace.

I think there is a need for the Crown, for central government, to step up and provide more support there. So I’d just ask Ministers what work or what programmes, if any, are specifically targeted—not just generally homelessness, but specifically targeted—at easing that transition from prison back into the community?

Look, I am so pleased to hear the member pushing for and recognising the needs of people coming out of prison, and can I also add to the member’s radar, for example, returned overseas offenders. So I want to highlight the Homelessness Action Plan actions, where we have been able to add more support for, particularly, women leaving prison—now, that was of one the actions, which is 26 women supporting 26 women—and also returned overseas offenders, 41 of them.

Can I also add to the member’s radar that transitioning out of acute mental health units is another of those areas where I welcome the members’ collective support to build public mandate that we need to get more housing for these very groups of people who are actually, more readily than not, dehumanised and are rejected from having support in housing. But we should look at this as criminal reoffending prevention, we should look at this as violence prevention, and we should look at this as health or disability prevention, or mental illness prevention. I do agree with the member that we absolutely need more of that specific support, and I hope he continues to prioritise that among his own colleagues as well. But I did want to give the member those updates on where we have made progress in those areas.

Just to add to that, there’s obviously the very important work that’s happening under the auspices of the Homelessness Action Plan in relation to women prisoners. But there is also within the emergency housing review a cross-agency group that not only brings in the Department of Corrections but also brings in the Ministry of Health, which I think is critical. We need to be thinking about mental health and addiction as well as corrections.

But I would like to see this as an area where we could develop a little bit more of a multipartisan conversation about this, because I think all too often there is a demonisation of the rehousing of people and how they reintegrate back into the community. I think that’s something that we see all too often in our communities, and it’s something that I strongly believe as a local MP it is our job to leadership on, rather than stirring up those embers of hate that can be there that do stop people successfully reintegrating, whether that is from mental health, that is from addiction, or indeed, if that is someone building a life outside of prison.

But housing also has the ability to be part of that rehabilitation for our prisoners. I think this week we’ve seen that wonderful story coming out of Rolleston Prison in Canterbury, and I know that I’ve been there with Minister Davidson to visit some of the young men that are learning a trade in prison so that when they get released, they’re actually going to be part of solving our housing crisis. They won’t just be a statistic in the housing crisis; they’ll actually be people with the skills and the qualifications and the trades that actually will be building houses for other people to be warm, safe, and dry in. So that is work that I would like to draw the House’s attention to, because I think it is something we can all celebrate.

I want to thank that member for that observation and for that question. It’s really important, that type of question, that type of challenge, for all of us in the House.

Under the previous Key Government, my own organisation had set up houses for prisoners and it had support, and I want to acknowledge that because it was one of the hardest things that I had ever done as a community CEO. As you know, Tama Potaka, at our marae at Ngā Whare Waatea, we had Zac Wallace, who was a former inmate—a long-time inmate—and his wife, Deidre Nehua, who ran the strategy in terms of reintegrating these prisoners back into society, and we had whole streets, Mr Bishop, who would turn on us because we were trying to reintegrate these prisoners back into society.

It was a major kaupapa and it remains a major kaupapa for our organisations. My mother was a Parole Board member for 20 years, and it was one of her major commitments in terms of the reintegration of these prisoners.

I think that it transcends a party, so I think that all parties can come together on this. I thank the member for his observation and the question.

I’d be keen to ask the Minister a brief question about the large-scale programme work, which is a significant part of the investment profile in the Estimates and a key part of providing more houses across our public and market provision. What I’m particularly interested in in my question is the fact that within the large-scale projects (LSPs), the Government is not just building houses; it is redeveloping whole communities. One of the questions that people often have is, well, what about the infrastructure that goes alongside that and whether it is going to be sufficient to deal with the various challenges that we face, and I wonder if the Minister could talk to us a little bit about what we are seeing in terms of the performance of those LSPs that are substantially complete or a long way along the track in respect of the extreme weather earlier this year and the performance of the infrastructure that was put in there. I think that’s important in terms of looking ahead as these developments go forward, to ensure that people have confidence that they’re going to be up to scratch to face those challenges.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the member Michael Woods for the question. So our large-scale projects that are happening across several suburbs in Auckland and, of course, in Minister Edmonds’ own suburb of Porirua are areas where not only is Kāinga Ora investing in the upgrade of infrastructure but central government is directly also—for the first time, really, since the 1970s—through the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, going in and doing quite large-scale upgrades of the infrastructure in these communities and neighbourhoods. Indeed, in the electorate of the member who asked the question, in some of the shovel-ready projects, some of those early projects were stormwater upgrades in Roskill that had already been completed, and we’re seeing the benefits of that and we certainly did in the floods earlier this year.

I think if we look at Northcote, if we look at Roskill, and we look at Māngere and at how those areas performed in those devastating floods, we can see the proof of the pudding. We had Northcote, which had been an area where the town centre had traditionally flooded and would have in an equivalent event in Auckland, but we saw that it had drained within 15 hours. The retention of the water in the stormwater provisioning that was there meant that that was a community that didn’t suffer the same consequences. Likewise, in parts of Roskill where we’ve done those upgrades—and the member will be well aware of these in his own electorate—we saw the ability of the infrastructure to cope with that extreme weather having been sufficiently improved, and likewise in Māngere as well.

So we need to be thinking several things when we’re making decisions about where it is that we build our houses. When we’re building for climate change, we need to think about what we’re building and we need to think about where we’re building it. But in terms of where we’re building it, we need to think about that ability of the existing infrastructure to cope or we need to think about what we need to be investing to ensure that we are upgrading it, and of course we also need to be ensuring that we know that we’re not building on sites that are going to become increasingly untenable as we continue through the decades of this century.

Three questions—a couple of them are related, and one of them is pretty random. I asked a question before in the education session that actually was tied in with housing, and that’s around the teen units at various high schools. These young mums are between 13 and 17 or 18 years old, but many of them are living in very exposed housing situations—very dangerous housing situations. In the one that I visited, they were saying, basically, that 80 percent lived in emergency housing, and of that 80 percent, about 60 percent of them were at risk. So I’m wondering what priority the Government is giving to those young mothers across teen units throughout the country around their housing needs—that’s the first one.

The second one is that the reports on emergency housing special needs grants that are issued by Ministry of Social Development acknowledge that, stating that there are about 7,500 adults and children in emergency homes right now, or who receive those sorts of grants. But there’s actually nothing reported on the stats for Rotorua, and I wonder, given the hype and the concentration on Rotorua, when will those stats be made available.

The third and final one is around Kāinga Ora and the many and various majestic developers that are out there that are building on behalf of Kāinga Ora and building to the needs of Kāinga Ora, and we had the situation last week where some of those homes were, unfortunately, set afire, set ablaze. I’m just trying to understand, through the Minister or the Associate Ministers, whether or not you’re comfortable with the level of risk assessment vis-à-vis community stakeholder engagement on where and how those projects are being built.

Kia ora. Three questions—thank you, Minister.

I’m happy to address them. In terms of the issue around youth homelessness, that of course is an absolute focus of the work that Minister Davidson is leading around how it is that we can have facilities that are catering towards youth homelessness. I visited in Hamilton some wonderful new developments that are catering very much—well, only for youth in transitional housing and how it is that we can set these young people up. They’re often young women, as you say, with children. We can set them on a path to have sustained tenancies throughout their lives, though my hope is that they can even one day move into a position where they can consider homeownership as well.

We see likewise that our Government has backed Sue Bagshaw’s Youth Hub development in Christchurch, which is going to be a game-changer. So in youth homelessness, for the first time, having specific facilities to deal with that very real issue has been a focus for our Government.

In terms of Rotorua, I draw the member Tama Potaka to this very useful dashboard, which is published monthly and has been for about six or seven months now. It is published on the Ministry of Social Development website, I believe, and it gives exactly the data that the member is looking for. So this is something for a period of time—

Chris Bishop: It excludes Rotorua.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: No, it is just about Rotorua, Mr Bishop. It is the Rotorua emergency housing report, which goes into various aspects of it. So that is just about Rotorua, for those that are desperate for the data on Rotorua, and we’re producing this for a very real reason, which is because we want to chart and measure the progress that we are making in Rotorua by taking a very place-based approach.

In terms of the consultation that Kāinga Ora does with its communities, I think we can see that it differs from development to development, depending on the development. Where it’s a large-scale project, we set up site offices and we spend months and actually, indeed, years working with local communities around what that development looks like. What we see is that sometimes Kāinga Ora will buy a development off the developer after it’s built. In terms of how it is that we deal with communities depends on the nature of what the development is and the way in which it’s coming on stream.

But, again, I reiterate, just as we did in the previous discussion, that if all of us wanted to solve a housing crisis, every person in this House has a job to do of showing leadership around the need for public housing to be placed somewhere. I get too many letters from members of this House complaining about public housing coming to their neighbourhoods, and it’s always something that brings despair to me.

We have two more minutes for this debate. If anyone else has any comments or questions—

Well, I’ve got one more question. A very quick question: has the Minister sought some advice on the Auckland Future Development Strategy, which—I know it sounds like quite a random question. But I think there’s quite a degree of concern from many in the community that the strategy—which is, basically, going to constrain Auckland’s growth—is going to have quite negative effects on house prices and, therefore, rents and affordability. It’s been slipped through a little bit surreptitiously. There’s not a lot of consultation going on and there’s quite a degree of concern about it, so I just want to put that on the Minister’s radar and ask if she is she aware of it. Has she sought some advice on it, and what are they going to do about it, if anything?

We have what in another country would be called a city deal with Auckland. We have these in six places around New Zealand where we have set them up, where we have set up these growth partnerships that bring together multiple arms of Government, as well as iwi and councils in local areas. We often look to make those sub-regional. So, in the case of my own home town, it is greater Christchurch. We’re bringing Waimakariri and Selwyn into that conversation as well.

So it’s not a matter of seeking advice and hearing about plans. This is an ongoing relationship that we have with Auckland City through our Urban Growth Partnership in terms of working through those issues. I think that our Government has managed to move the model beyond hearing about things from councils, seeking advice, and then going back to them, because we have looked to establish partnerships and to work in concert.

A big part of a partnership is, actually, that you don’t have to agree on everything, but then you can work through to find solutions, and that is exactly what we’re doing. We’re doing it in Tauranga through the Smart Growth partnership, we’re doing it along the Auckland-Hamilton corridor, we’re doing it in Auckland, we’re doing it in Hamilton, we’re doing it in Christchurch, and we’re doing it in Queenstown. I think that in six years, the fact that we’ve set up, essentially, what other countries would call these city deals and that they’re well under way and that we have actually managed to group together funding so that we can start to have conversations across the various arms of local government, central government, and iwi about how that works is of benefit.

Kia orana, members. That concludes our debate on housing. The time has come for me to leave the Chair. I will resume the Chair at 7.30 p.m., after the dinner break. Ka kite anō.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

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