Skilled Housing New Zealand intern joins Dwell

Dwell chief executive, Alison Cadman with Housing New Zealand’s Ingrid Downey

Dwell successfully applied to employ Ingrid Downey from Housing New Zealand, where she is a Technical Advisor in HNZ’s Business Advisory Team. Ingrid has worked with HNZ for nine years and in housing in the US before that. Ingrid will assist Dwell with their asset management systems and strategies. An asset management strategy is a critical business tool to align Dwell’s property assets with their strategic goals, including the need to provide more homes.

Paul Commons, Housing New Zealand’s Chief Operating Officer, says this initiative is just the start of a closer working relationship between the two organisations.

“One of our key goals for Housing New Zealand this year is to strengthen our relationships with Community Housing Providers. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to share our know-how in providing public housing for New Zealanders and look forward to learning more from Dwell as Ingrid goes through this experience,” said Mr Commons.

“This initiative will facilitate a continuing close relationship between us and Dwell, and a model for Housing New Zealand to support other Community Housing Providers.

Dwell CE, Alison Cadman, commented: “We are incredibly excited to be able to partner with Housing NZ in this way. This is a unique way for us to learn from them and for us both to combine our strengths and experiences. We know that HNZ will gain too, when Ingrid returns with greater understanding of the sector from this experience. We hope too that what we achieve will have benefits for the wider community housing sector.

“Huge thanks to DIA – we still can’t believe we have Ingrid full-time for six months. To be able to step up and achieve our strategic goal of More Homes we need extra resources, this addition to our team is significant.”