The Government will announce today that it will build and refurbish more than 700 houses in the Hutt Valley over the next five years.The announcement, by Housing New Zealand Minister Amy Adams, follows protests earlier this year about the amount of vacant Housing NZ land in Lower Hutt, and the length of time it had been left.
1 July 2017 marked the start of the new housing partnership provided by Haumaru Housing, a limited partnership between The Selwyn Foundation and Auckland Council, which has taken over operations of the councils Housing for Older People portfolio.
The government has released its first test case using anonymised data as part of its social investment plan, showing the effect social housing has on time people spend in jail, education and the impact on earnings.In a speech to the New Zealand Analytics Forum in Auckland, social investment minister Amy Adams said the first social housing test case by the Ministry of Social Development's Social Investment Unit (SIU) "shows that it’s possible to understand the broader fiscal impacts of a single service, like social housing, on agencies, such as health and education."
In this newsletter we announce the short list for the Christchurch stock transfer and look into the new standard introduced for methamphetamine testing. We also hear from the former Chairman and President of the Master Builders Association and current CEO of Easybuild Mike Fox on why the current system stops builders from delivering affordable housing.
Homelessness - a view from the United States was written by Jan Rivers of Scoop media following our recent community housing conference in Wellington where we were joined by Nan Roman of the US National Alliance to End Homelessness. Nan talked about the US efforts to cut homelessness and what she had to say was highly relevant to New Zealand.
Standards New Zealand has today released NZS 8510:2017 Testing and decontamination of methamphetamine-contaminated properties, which will provide industry guidance on good practice methods in the testing and clean-up of methamphetamine contamination in houses.
At the recent Community Housing Aotearoa conference in Wellington Mike Fox provided a short presentation outlining why the construction industry is finding it impossible to supply affordable housing. Mike says that without political ownership or a major overhaul of the current regulatory processes affordable housing will never be delivered. Here is his address which summarises the housing development industries 30 year journey to unaffordability.
Why are Māori and Pacific homeownership rates declining? Rau Hoskins of peak body for Māori Housing, Te Mataphihi, talks to Radio New Zealand on why this has happened.
The homes earmarked for Opal Drive would be the same design as these homes also built for transitional housing, at Luke Street in Auckland.
A call for contributors to the Parity edition of Homelessness in Aotearoa New Zealand October 2017
