Pensioner homes set to pass

Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse said the council's "key focus" was on more housing.

Auckland Council's 1400 pensioner homes look set to pass to a new community-controlled entity to be redeveloped into more intensive housing, partly for sale to private buyers.

The council's development committee, comprising all councillors, has voted 17-1 to seek community housing providers to "partner with council" to manage its 62 pensioner villages covering 26ha.

The community partners are expected to get majority control to qualify for up to $4 million a year in Government income-related rental subsidies. The Government agreed last year to give the subsidies to new tenants of community providers but has refused to give them to councils.

The subsidies will help finance more intensive redevelopment which officials say "could potentially double the provision of housing".

But their report says: "Redevelopment will likely deliver a combination of social and market housing." The council's goals will be to "maintain at least the current level of older adult provision and/or social housing", improve its quality, and ease the city's housing shortage by building new housing for sale.

Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse said the council's "key focus" was on more housing.

"We are looking at everything from working with developers in the special housing areas right through to our older-adult housing portfolio," she said.

She said the council was already working with developers to build 180 affordable apartments at Wilsher Village in Henderson to replace 68 former low-rise pensioner rental units.

North Shore pensioner Gloria Howe, 69, said she understood the need for more intensive housing at the 30-unit, single-storey Stratford Court where she lives on a $6.6 million Milford site.

"It's prime ground," she said. "This is progress these days, isn't it?"

But she said the land was bought for social housing when the village was opened in 1970 and should be used for more social housing for a waiting list of 300 pensioners, not for private sales.

"They are trying to treat it like we are a dollar value rather than humans," she said.

The country's biggest community housing provider, IHC-owned Accessible Properties, said it was "potentially interested" in partnering with the council. It is also bidding to be part of a new entity that will lease Christchurch City Council's 2200 social housing units.

Habitat for Humanity, which is bidding to buy Hamilton City Council's 344 pensioner homes, said it would be "open to look at" the Auckland proposal, but its Auckland director Warren Jack said it was already stretched building 15 new homes at Weymouth.

Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett said community providers that took over council housing would qualify for Government subsidies, which reduce rents to 25 per cent of the tenants' incomes, only for new tenants who moved in after the transfer. Existing council tenants would not be eligible.

NZH ml