Friday’s release of Government’s Public Housing Plan is not enough to address the crisis of affordable housing that Auckland faces says Hope Simonsen, Chair of the Auckland Community Housing Provider Network.
“The very limited focus on social housing (public housing) does not address the scale of need in Auckland, nor does it talk about the wider need for assisted rentals and pathways to homeownership.
“Why isn’t government talking about this plan in the context of a national housing strategy?” Ms Simonsen says. “We have been expecting to see tools that join things together, and this plan doesn’t do that.”
“The lack of capital funding means that we cannot fully activate the capability of the 20 community housing providers working across Auckland.”
There are currently over two thousand homes in the Auckland CHP provider pipeline over the next two years, but that declines to less than a few hundred because of the lack of available capital funding.
“Given the crisis, why are we letting that happen?” Ms Simonsen says.
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