Community housing sector welcomes new data on social housing

Community Housing Aotearoa say it is pleased to see the Ministry of Social Development continue to publish informative data on social housing but is concerned that the level of social housing need continues to increase.

”Yesterday’s release shows that the Ministry of Social Development is continuing progress toward more open and transparent information sharing,” says Scott Figenshow, CE of Community Housing Aotearoa.

“The Ministry’s Social Housing Quarterly Reports are an important tool for those working towards seeing all New Zealanders well-housed. It marks a new pinnacle in data sharing as we are seeing an increasing level of detail.”

“We agree it’s a good thing that more people are coming forward to document their housing need. But we need to go further and document all requests for housing assistance, not only those that meet the current criteria for eligibility.”

“The community housing sector works tirelessly to meet demand and being able to track the changes in housing need helps us meet demand in the most effective way,” he says.

A clear priority for the new government should be a 10 year purchasing strategy committing to an additional 25,000 permanent social housing places being purchased over that period according to Scott Figenshow.

“We have a sector with the ability to deliver high quality housing and services to meet community need. If we are truly going to meet the demand for housing in this country, we need to be purchasing 2,500 new social housing places per year.

We would like to see this distributed so community housing providers are delivering 1,000 of those 2,500 places and Housing New Zealand building 1,500 units of new social housing supply per year. That would truly ease the pressure families in need are facing.”