A JOINED-UP APPROACH

Housing

Coming together to ensure people have adequate housing are Manaaki Tairāwhiti, Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Ngai Tamanuhiri and Rongowhakaata iwi operating as Toitu Tairāwhiti Housing Limited, Kāinga Ora, Gisborne District Council, Trust Tairāwhiti, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Te Puni Kokiri, and Rau Tipu Rau Ora, the regional governance group.

The 2019 housing strategy developed by Manaaki Tairāwhiti supported the region to achieve the highest percentage increase in building consents in the country (to the year ended 2022). Its focus was on establishing the foundations for continued growth.

Late last year, Manaaki Tairāwhiti presented a report to the Rau Tipu Rau Ora governance group, on the housing delivery momentum achieved over the past three years. It highlighted the ongoing housing challenges the region faced, including increasing levels of homelessness. Rau Tipu Rau Ora asked Manaaki Tairāwhiti, working with the GDC, to prepare a Regional Housing Strategy to bring together into one plan all the housing initiatives and initiatives that individual organisations and agencies were already working on.

The new housing strategy, approved by Rau Tipu Rau Ora in June, outlines a shared regional vision for housing, agreed housing outcomes and targets that all contributors have committed to.

The major driver for the strategy is lifting regional wellbeing and prosperity through collaborative action.

Selwyn Parata is the co-chair of Rau Tipu Rau Ora and chair of Te Runanga o Ngāti Porou. The runanga has been involved in regional housing since 1994, when the Ngāti Porou Housing Strategy was released, and the 1995 Low Deposit Rural Lending Programme was introduced. The iwi organisation is a foundation member of Toitu Tairāwhiti Housing company, leading the iwi housing work stream of the strategy.

He says addressing the region's housing challenges required a new, joined-up approach with everyone playing to their strengths, so that whānau have a whakaruruhau (literally, shelter from the wind) that provides them with a safe, secure home to prosper and thrive.

“Rau Tipu Rau Ora is committed to collaborating for collective impact, and the housing strategy is a prime example of this.”

Rau Tipu Rau Ora co-chair Mayor Rehette Stoltz reiterates the region's commitment to working together to ensure that every child grows up in a warm and dry home.

“Council, our iwi partners, Manaaki Tairāwhiti and our RTRO team work collaboratively to ensure our new housing strategy is fit-for-purpose as well as aspirational,” she says. “Housing is a regional responsibility with several different partners playing their unique roles to make it happen.

“Our strategy is making sure we address immediate need as quickly as possible to fill the current housing void, but most importantly, to plan and act to have affordable, suitable housing for future generations.”

While hundreds of homes may already be under construction, the crisis has worsened and “we can't afford to take our foot off the gas”, says Manaaki Tairāwhiti strategic adviser Judy Campbell. “There is still plenty to be done even though we started acting early and every part of the system has responded,” she says.

She's talking about iwi, local and central government, as well as private developers. “People are not sitting on their hands, and the developments cover right across the spectrum.

“I am really pleased with the amount of housing in the pipeline, but building is always too slow, and we need to continue to do it for years to make the real changes we need.

“This is a problem that has been years in the making.”

The waiting list for social housing at MSD is enormous — more than 700 families. Originally population growth created the crisis with the extra million or so people in New Zealand. Economic conditions, and the advent and impact of Covid-19 added to the crisis, squeezing more and more vulnerable whānau out of the market.

The continuum of need covers everything from higher end private houses through to crisis housing including caravans, and emergency, transition and social housing.

There are new builds happening across the region in Childers Road, Muriwai, Palmerston Road, and Stout Street to name just a few, with plenty more in the planning.

“The good news is how much Kāinga Ora is building and how much the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is funding to build hundreds of homes.”

Some of those will be social housing owned by the government and filled with people receiving an accommodation supplement, but other initiatives include private developers selling to Kainga Ora, who continue to look for properties to develop.

Iwi housing initiatives, including new builds, relocatable houses and papakāinga housing, have attracted government funding to build around 170 homes.

The biggest drive is to create affordable housing.

“No one wants people to be permanent tenants of the government,” says Ms Campbell. “If you rent for life, and spend all that money on accommodation, you will not have an asset base to assist your kids to get on the property ladder . . . and so the cycle will continue. There is a big difference between just getting people into houses and getting people on the pathway to home ownership — that is the goal.”

But there is pushback.

“It can be challenging to some established homeowners in Gisborne who are used to their neighbourhoods staying pretty much the same for the past few decades. Hundreds of new homes going up around town is a change that not everyone is on board with, particularly when they are more intensive than we've been used to, but as a society we owe each other the opportunity to have healthy homes,” says Ms Campbell.

“The real issue is that people are in unsuitable housing for too long and the building responses we are seeing are a step up for people having to live with overcrowding, in motels for many months and even in cars at the beach. The NIMBY (not in my backyard) attitude has to change.”

She and the others around the table know the challenges are great, but equally this is a crisis that must have an ending fitting for whānau in Tairāwhiti.

“We are committed to the long haul to ensure all Tairāwhiti whānau have access to a safe, fit-for-purpose, healthy and affordable home,” says Ms Campbell.

“Some things can be addressed relatively quickly through changes in local policies and practices, but others will require longer term systemic and possibly legislative change.”

The figures in Tairāwhiti are scary. There are around 730 families on the Ministry of Social Development waiting list for accommodation. Ms Campbell estimates that equates to around 1600 people, half of whom are children.

“Where are they all living? Some will be in motels, others will be at the beach or in someone's garage.

“Decent housing is a human right.”

Add to that the plight of the working poor who five to six years ago could have bought a house with a $60,000 deposit. That figure has now ballooned to as much as $200,000 for a basic family home, over a period that has seen no one's wages go up by anywhere near that extent. The population of the region has grown by around 5000 in the past couple of years — a reversal in the trend of previous years.

That increase brings with it a higher demand for homes from a broader cross-section of our community.

The shortage of houses across the board will continue to grow in the coming years, places additional demands on already overloaded infrastructure, requiring a major overhaul and new infrastructure needing to be built.

In addition to that, statistics suggest the quality of homes in the region is below par too, with around 22 percent of households damp, nearly 16 percent with visible mould and 8 percent without access to basic amenities including cooking facilities, safe tap water, a bath, shower, toilet, or electricity supply.

Many motels are used as emergency housing, but these rooms are often without cooking facilities, and cost up to $300 a night. While it is meant to be only temporary, some families have been in them for a year.

“Even with the hundreds of homes being built, we need more and more. At the very bottom end, there is just not enough capacity, and getting these new-builds over the line just takes too long. That has to change.”

Gisborne District Council is in the throes of creating its 30-year plan which focuses on planning for future growth — where new housing developments will go and what that would look like for the region, alongside business and industrial needs.

Chief of strategy and science, Joanna Noble, says while there is a critical shortage, the longer term also needs to be carefully considered. “We don't want to be fixing issues now and end up back in the same place in 15 years' time,” she says.

Access to building materials is another potential barrier, especially in pandemic times. Trust Tairāwhiti is strengthening the supply chain of imported materials so the region can access a larger proportion of building materials through a number of ways. Plans are afoot for the Wood Engineering Technology joint venture, which turns lower-grade logs into high-value structural lumber for framing, to become a seven day operation producing more for the local market.

Another initiative is to establish a new factory at the Wood Cluster Centre by the end of 2023 to provide framing lumber for 1700 more houses a year. Most of the trusses and framing used in the region are trucked in from out of town. This would create jobs and a solid future for anyone looking at a career in the starved construction sector.

Those involved see the new housing strategy as our best chance for making a real difference.

Naomi Whitewood, regional director East North Island, Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities says the Tairāwhiti Housing Strategy brings together the organisations that are working towards providing housing solutions and makes it clear what each organisation's role is.

“It is only by working together with our partners and the communities they represent, that we can be sure that homes built now work well for the people who will live in them, and the wider community.”

Between 1 July 2020 and 31 July 2022, Kāinga Ora delivered 55 new public homes in Tairāwhiti. Another 129 homes are under construction or procurement.

A reinvigorated housing steering group is set to meet shortly. Chair George Reedy says with the strategy now in place it was time for implementation. “Our focus is on establishing a housing pipeline that supports whānau to access short, medium and long-term housing solutions, be that emergency, social, affordable or papakāinga housing,” says Mr Reedy.

“We are committed to growing the local construction workforce and to working with local businesses to source local materials, shore up building supplies and increase the range of housing products available to whānau.”

DID YOU KNOW . . .

A Gisborne housing stocktake in 2021, commissioned by Manaaki Tairāwhiti and Trust Tairāwhiti highlighted . . .

' In the year to June 2021, the median house price increased 40 percent, outpacing the national increase of 21 percent

' House prices are now 10.6 times the average household income and 11.8 times the income of the average renting household

' The number of rentals in Tairāwhiti has consistently tracked downwards in the past three years while the population has grown year on year

' Rents have soared by 10 percent a year over the past three years

' Rents are rising faster in Gisborne than the rest of New Zealand

' The waitlist on the Housing Register for a rental has more than doubled in the past year

' The government housing assistance spend in Tairāwhiti is around $45 million a year

' 143 houses were consented in the year to August 2021 – up 59 percent on 2020

' The cost of construction rose 9 percent in 2021 with section prices up 34 percent

' Incomes are not keeping pace with the rapidly rising house prices

' If houses were built at the current consent rate of 143 it would take four years to close the gap

' Increased employment will support demand for housing