Social housing places in Auckland boosted

Salvation Army, Accessible Properties and the Chinese New Settler Trust have signed on to provide places, and a further two community housing organisations are expected to sign contracts in the next few weeks. The request for more social housing from the community housing sector in Auckland is expected to deliver over 500 new places, with 87 places provided by The Salvation Army.

Government will give CHO’s a $10 million cash injection to help get the places up and running, tied to milestones such as building new houses.

Leases of between 10 and 25 years will give the organisations a guaranteed rental income – and also allow them to seek money from private organisations, social housing Minister, Paula Bennett, says.

Director of Community Housing Aoteroa, Scott Figenshow, said there were many other housing groups which had put forward proposals.

“While we don’t know exactly the nature of all of those proposals … we do wonder if price is still not one of the concerns.

“And we would have thought that it’s in the government’s best interests to be purchasing pretty much all of the units that the community housing sector can deliver to it.”

The system needed to work more efficiently to meet demand. “Because if it’s going to take another year to purchase another thousand units, we’re not meeting the needs of families. We need to be able to do this in a way that works a lot more simply and straightforwardly.” Radio New Zealand report can be found here.

See the NZ Herald article here, the report on TVNZ here and Paula Bennett’s press release here.