Homeless need permanent homes, builders need work: action group

Thursday, 14 May 2020

House building is expected to fall off significantly, but affordable housing is still extremely scarce.

Community housing providers are calling on the Government to support both the homeless and the construction sector with permanent housing for the thousands of homeless.

Bernie Smith, chief executive of Monte Cecilia Housing Trust, says the Government had spent massive amounts on getting people into emergency housing or motels before the Covid-19 crisis.

Monte Cecilia Housing Trust chief executive Bernie Smith says people have few places for move on to, from motels and emergency housing.

But there was very little private rental or state housing across the country for these people to graduate into.

With many of their clients paying 60 to 70 per cent of their income in rent, Smith said there was a need not just for new houses but housing they could afford.

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''We know any building programme takes years so any planning today you're not going to see tenants in those properties for 18 months to two years.

Major Campbell Roberts: ''No point in throwing good money after bad.''

''So what the Government needs to do is, yes, ramp up building public housing at double and treble the rate they were planning to do, but also support the community housing providers, not with grants but with grant loans, because we can build several thousand properties as well.

''We need to look at all of the options possible to create affordable housing.''

BNZ economist Stephen Toplis this week put out a gloomy forecast for the residential building sector, predicting a steep decline in demand for private new housing and suggesting the housing crisis could soon be over.

But Scott Figenshow, chief executive of Community Housing Aotearoa, a collective of more than 50 community housing providers, said that was not the case for those on very low incomes.

Some initial work among just 12 of the providers had identified enough land to build more than 2600 community or shared equity houses.

And they were not the kind of houses that would cut across the state housing programme, he said.

The humanitarian response of moving people into motels was praiseworthy, ''but it is not always the right permanent housing solution for families,'' Figenshow said.

Major Campbell Roberts, of the Salvation Army, said until now, he didn't believe the Government had been desperate enough to be more creative in social housing space.

But now was the time for a bold upsurge in housing which would also support the vulnerable residential building sector.

''There is certainly no point of putting more money into transitional or emergency housing if they don't actually address the building situation. It's throwing good money after bad.

Demolition and renewal work in Invercargill's CBD. It's the kind of work the construction industry will be crying out for if residential housing drops as predicted.

''They need to take on the challenge and say, we've going to build our way out of this.''

The Government has already pledged $400 million towards progressive home ownership and it's hinted in the past at shared equity or rent to buy housing.

However, a fresh cash injection to stimulate private sector or state housing does not yet appear to be on the radar for the government agencies involved in housing.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development told Stuff that various options to help the construction industry were being considered, including reducing risk to new developments, rather than direct government loans or subsidies.

Work on Wellington's Transmission Gully. Roads and schools are expected to be big beneficiaries of the Government's investment in ''shovel ready'' projects.

The Government was considering how the progressive homeowner scheme might be adapted to respond to Covid-19, a spokesperson said.

''However, at this stage, support for people building their first home is not being explored.''

It was also working with the Construction Sector Accord, an industry-Government consultation group, on ''additional forms of support'' to ensure that affordable new housing continued to be built.

Kāinga Ora - a merger of KiwiBuild, Housing NZ and developer HLC - has an ongoing brief to retrofit and renew state housing.

Meanwhile, the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment pointed the Government's $8.8 billion investment in ''shovel ready'' projects which are due to be announced in May.

Building experts have already said that if the projects are heavily skewed towards infrastructure, it would not necessarily be of much assistance to the much bigger residential and commercial sectors, as many skills weren't easily transferred to civil projects.

MBIE said the Government has also directed public sector agencies to keep cash flowing on government projects, including paying contractors promptly and the early release of retentions.

Work was also underway on emerging issues including questions around director's liability, site works insurance and the impact of weather on closed sites.