Housing crisis: New benefactor fund backs Tauranga social housing project
Thursday, 12 December 2019
A new fund aiming to build long-term housing for the vulnerable hopes a project of nearly 100 homes in Tauranga will be the first of many throughout the country.
Newly-founded Community Finance is working with community housing providers on a development in the suburb Bethlehem, mixing open market homes, with those for families who will be helped into home ownership.
Low-cost finance provided by wealthy ethical investors and entities, is a key element in the concept which intends to break a heavy dependence on government funding for community housing schemes.
'We thought, how do we create bridge, between wealth, proven housing solutions and poverty,' said James Palmer, the CEO of Community Finance.
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Community Finance has just signed up the Tindall Foundation to join other philanthropic bodies The Lindsay Foundation, The Wilberforce Foundation, Christian Savings, as co-investors in its fund.
The not-for-profit offers wholesale investors a 2 per cent return, and lends to a coalition of established community housing providers at a cheaper rate than banks.
Community Finance has also launched a $40 million bond to fund three Auckland developments for the Salvation Army, and has other proposals for developments mixing free-market and social housing on its books.
In Bethlehem, the charitable trust of the property-investing McDougall family is providing some of the finance through the new agency, and the development will be built on land bought from the trust.
The project is the first for Community Finance involving a major benefactor, and the first in a city with growing housing problems.
'We have a housing crisis in Tauranga and we have a social housing crisis with an increasing number of homeless,' Mayor Tenby Powell told Stuff.
Powell said while Tauranga was perceived as a wealthy area, it had 400 known homeless, and more that hadn't been counted.
The development planned in Tauranga's northern, wealthy suburb of Bethlehem will not just build homes, but provide support services, help initial tenants to own their homes, and include an on-site daycare centre.
'So they go from emergency to social housing, to individual home ownership and never move from the same home,' said Paul Gilberd, Community Finance's general manager.
One of the agencies taking part in Bethlehem is Habitat for Humanity, which helps low-income families into home ownership.
'This is a bit of a pilot really and if it works - and we can't see why it wouldn't - then it gives us a real baseline for doing more of this,' said Nic Greene, the general manager.
John McDougall, whose father is a director of the land-owner and investor, Matua Charitable Trust, talked of the 'joy of the journey' working with partner on an outcome for families.
'There's a lot of people out there doing amazing work, and solving problems household by household,' McDougall told Stuff.
The exact shape of the Bethlehem development has not been finalised yet, with the mix, and style of both free-market homes and social dwellings still being worked on.
The site could handle up to 155 homes, but Community Finance said it was working on around 99 to allow communal green space near the top of the elevated property.