Thousands to come off housing list

Housing Minister Phil Heatley. Photo / Mark Mitchell

About 4700 families with only "moderate" or "low" housing needs will be bumped off the waiting list for state houses if the National Party wins this year's election.

Housing Minister Phil Heatley says Housing NZ will stop accepting applicants with low or moderate needs on its waiting list from next Friday and the policy will extend next year to people already on the list if National wins the election.

All new state house tenants will also go on to three-year reviewable tenancies from July 1 and that policy will also apply to existing tenants if National is re-elected.

He told the Weekend Herald that the new social housing unit, due to start in the Department of Building and Housing on July 1, would be asked to propose a new system of subsidising housing costs to replace the current income-related rents for state houses and accommodation supplement for the private sector within the next six to 12 months.

A job description for the unit's director says the unit will also "seek expressions of interest for potential providers" of social housing from community groups in its first year.

The Government has endorsed an advisory group proposal to transfer some state houses and undeveloped land to groups such as the Salvation Army and IHC, but Mr Heatley said he had not endorsed the group's target of transferring 20 per cent of the existing 69,000 state houses within five years.

He ruled out "giving them away cheaply" because he wanted Housing NZ to use the proceeds from the sales to build and buy more state housing in high-need areas such as Auckland.

"If we have 70,000 state houses today, we don't want to divest in the social housing sector to 50,000 state houses and 20,000 in community housing. We want 90,000," he said.

Housing NZ will have to focus solely on people with high housing needs but community groups may pick up some of those with only moderate needs, who are defined as being "unlikely to be able to access or afford suitable, adequate and sustainable housing" without help.

There were 2500 households with moderate need and 2200 with low need on Housing NZ's waiting list last month. More than half (2700) were in Auckland.

Community Housing Aotearoa chairman Alan Johnson said most of those with low and moderate needs could not get into state houses anyway because there were so many high-need applicants ahead of them in areas such as Auckland.

But Labour shadow housing minister Moana Mackey, a Gisborne-based list MP, said people with moderate needs still sometimes got into state houses in her area, so refusing them state houses would create vacant houses that would be sold.

"That really worries me. We need to be building our social housing, not selling it off," she said.

"In the area where I live there is just such a shortage of rental housing that Housing NZ is the major provider. They may well lose people in category C [moderate need], but those are the people who are poor. Where are they going to go?"

Mr Heatley said some iwi groups wanted to take over managing state houses rather than buying them, but the Government wanted to sell them.

"What we are trying to do is increase the number of houses. The idea of passing over state houses or land or cash [to community providers] is that those housing providers would equal it, so it would generate an increase," he said.

Mr Johnson said community providers applauded the plan in principle but warned that they had limited ability to "leverage" state house transfers to build more social housing as Mr Heatley hoped, unless they got the same kind of subsidies as Housing NZ's income-related rents.

"We still believe that Government support of 60 per cent of the cost of a house will be required for us to be viable," he said. "There are no magic bullets here."

Housing changes

4700
families with only "moderate" or "low" housing needs will be bumped off the waiting list

3
year reviewable tenancies for all state house tenants

20,000
state houses and other land may be sold to community groups.