MSD’s Public Housing: Update

May has been a big month for the Public Housing sector. On 4 May, the Prime Minister and Minister Twyford announced a $100 million investment into tackling homelessness this winter, and Thursday’s budget announcement gave us insight to the Government’s long-term plan for public housing with a commitment to fund 6,400 new homes over four years.

Increasing supply will generate better housing outcomes across our communities, and it’s already started with the work we’ve been doing together to prepare for winter.

How we’re tracking – housing the homeless over Winter 2018

As you will be aware, we have been working hard with providers like you to deliver more housing options for New Zealanders in need this winter.

We’ve made significant progress against our targets already, and we think it’s important that this work is visible to you, and our communities.

That’s why we’ve decided to publicly release monthly progress reports on our website. The April figures are now available to view here. We’ll update this information each month and let you know when it’s live via our Housing Update.

If you’re not signed up to receive this newsletter it’s a great way of keeping up-to-date about what’s happening here at MSD and in the sector. You can subscribe to receive it here.

Opportunities update

As part of our winter response, we’ve asked New Zealanders to contact us directly if they’ve got land or a property that they’d like to contribute to the winter response.

I’m pleased to let you know that the response we’ve had to this call-to-action has been tremendous. To date, close to one hundred individuals have contacted MSD about opportunities for short or long term supply.

We are currently working through these opportunities to make sure they are fit-for-purpose, which means:

• Warm, safe and dry properties (or properties that could be made to be), and
• land suitable for placing relocatables on, or for construction.

Converting these opportunities relies on us partnering with trusted providers to deliver more housing supply – we can’t do this on our own.

If you’d like to work with us to deliver more in your area, please get in contact with us at [email protected] and let us know:

• the types of opportunities you might be interested in being approached about
• the types of service you have capacity to expand (e.g. transitional, CHP, or other)
• the geographical areas you are interested in working in, and
• when you might have capacity to deliver more.

We’re open to new ideas

I want to reiterate we will work with you to negotiate any barriers you have; this includes being flexible and open to exploring new ways of working with you to deliver more this winter.

It’s been really heartening to have the conversations we have been having with all of you and others in our communities about bringing on new housing supply this winter.

Thanks heaps for all the work you’ve done to date.