Announcement from Andrew Crisp regarding the new Ministry of Housing and Urban Development

Kia ora koutou

I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce the new Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to you as the stakeholders we hope to work closely with.

It is an exciting time, with operations beginning on Monday 1 October.

The new Ministry will be the Government’s lead advisor on housing and urban development. We will help the Government to deliver its ambitious housing and urban development programme to:

• address homelessness
• increase public and private housing supply
• make existing homes warmer and healthier
• make housing affordable for people to rent and buy
• support quality urban development and thriving communities.

This is not work we can do alone. We will be looking outwards to build our connections and relationships across the wider public and private sectors, including how we will partner and work with Māori.

Our relationships with existing and new stakeholders, and partnerships with Māori, will be a very strong focus of the new Ministry.

Setting up the new Ministry

An establishment team has been working hard to set up the new Ministry, and one of my first actions was to establish a foundation structure for the Ministry. This structure will evolve as we build our capability as an organisation.

Initially the Ministry has a strong housing focus, pulling in housing policy, funding and regulatory functions from MBIE, MSD and Treasury from 1 October, including:

• MBIE’s housing and urban policy functions, the KiwiBuild Unit and the Community Housing Regulatory Authority.
• MSD’s policy for emergency, transitional, public housing and aspects of private housing subsidies, and the provider-facing purchaser role for emergency, transitional and public housing.
• Treasury’s monitoring of Housing New Zealand and Tāmaki Redevelopment Company.

We’ve deliberately taken a staged approach to establishing the Ministry to avoid disrupting work underway between these agencies and stakeholders. Over the next year or so, we’ll integrate and develop these functions, and build up further capability and leadership, especially in the urban development space.

When fully operational:

• HUD will lead a comprehensive housing strategy for New Zealand, working closely with iwi, the housing and urban development sector, the social sector, central and local government and communities.
• HUD will give strategic, connected advice across the housing system, from addressing homelessness to developing affordable, healthy housing that meets the needs of a changing population.
• HUD will drive urban development strategies to create the spaces, infrastructure and services that thriving communities need.
• HUD will drive collective accountability, leading a board of government chief executives to deliver the Government’s housing and urban development priorities.
• HUD will be strongly evidence-based, developing better data and analysis to track our progress and drive our strategies.

Senior leadership team

The leadership team of the new Ministry includes:

Head of KiwiBuild – Stephen Barclay

Stephen was appointed Head of KiwiBuild in May 2018, with responsibility for the Government’s flagship programme that aims to build 100,000 quality, affordable homes over the next decade.

DCE Public Housing Supply – Scott Gallacher

Scott has been leading the Housing Business Group within MSD since late 2016.

The team also includes the following leaders while a permanent appointment process is completed:

DCE Policy – Jo Hughes

Jo comes to us from the DCE Strategic Policy and Programmes role at MBIE.

Head of People and Culture – Catherine Taylor

Catherine was recently working at KiwiBuild, supporting the set-up of the unit and was previously part of the Kiwibank senior leadership team as Head of HR.

Chief Financial Officer – Jo Hogg

Jo Hogg recently held the Head of Corporate position at Education Payroll Limited.

Head of Office of CE – Brad Ward

Brad was most recently the Head of the Chief Executive’s Office at MBIE.

DCE Strategic Development – Nick Maling

Nick joins us from the Ministry for Primary Industries where he currently leads the Strategy, Performance and Engagement branch.

I’m attaching short bios of the leadership team that give a little more background. HUD Leadership Team bios.pdf

Housekeeping

Many of you will have established relationships with people and teams who are part of the new Ministry. To reach your existing relationship holders or contacts in the new Ministry, please use the email format of [email protected] from 1 October onwards.

It’s also important to note that the changes will not affect where people go to for help with housing. The Ministry of Social Development will continue to be the place to come if people are homeless or urgently need a place to stay, or need access to public housing and other types of support. MSD will also continue to manage the Housing Register of applicants for public housing.

Working together

Housing and urban development is critically important to New Zealanders and we have an incredibly exciting opportunity in front of us to combine strengths and make a real difference.

The leadership team and I are looking forward to meeting with you in the coming weeks and months.

As well as sharing more with you about our vision and plans, I am especially keen to seek your advice on how we can better connect across the sector and work together to tackle the challenges of homelessness, affordable housing and urban development.

We look forward to working with you.

Andrew Crisp

Chief Executive

Ministry of Housing and Urban Development – Establishment Team