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CCC Long Term Plan Submission 2021

OUR CONCERN

It doesn’t matter who you talk to in New Zealand, everyone will agree with you that shelter is the most basic and important issue that faces us in 2021. 

The New Zealand government as sent a very clear message that housing was a problem in its 2017 election campaign by committing to build 100,000 homes within 10 years.

In March 2021 the government changed a number of rules around housing tax regulations in an attempt to address the runaway housing market.

The media would have us all believe there is a ‘housing crisis’, we don’t agree.  Many New Zealanders don’t have a problem at all, the equity in their homes is ballooning, others have incomes that can sustain rising rents.  What we do have is a crisis for those on the bottom rungs of the housing ladder.

The Christchurch Probation Service and Salvation Army tell us, and we agree, that the single biggest driver of reoffending in New Zealand is housing.  When people don’t have good shelter many different things happen which end in crime. 

Under a previous government, a ‘war on drugs’ was declared.  This meant that Housing New Zealand tenants were evicted and not allowed to return, acceptable levels of methamphetamine contamination were set so low that many homes were closed, and massive amounts of money spent on remediation and testing. 

We believe that the net result was tipping ‘fringe tenants’ into the private market, where they declared was on landlords.  The private market push back was to tip a massive amount of housing stock into the short stay housing market, from which it will likely never return, while putting tenants in jail or on the streets.

A massive amount of damage has been done in all markets and is now going to take considered effort to repair.

WHAT IS THE CIVIC ROLE

It is our view that Christchurch City Council has a very significant role to play in the Christchurch market, which will also influence the national marketplace.

The council’s role must be to influence the bottom rungs of the ladder for the benefit for the wider community and play a role in protecting the private market from the ‘fringe tenant’ community who clearly need much more than a traditional “mum and dad” landlord, they need the combined resource of a council with a $400 million dollar housing resource and $13 billion dollar asset base.

The councils new Social Housing Strategy is to be commended.  It is a foundation stone by which council staff can be agile in their approach to making an extensive and positive impact for the benefit of the Christchurch and country wide community.

At present the council is being to ‘risk adverse’, not making enough use of civic resource, not trading in the market and not dedicating enough resource to supporting the community to improve the bottom rungs of the housing market.  It has ventured into unwise ‘pet projects’ while not engaging in reasonable market dynamics.

It’s our view that elected members have become so frustrated at the lack of action that they have been endorsing ‘borderline silly’ projects just to attempt to make a point.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

Become Aggressive!

The council has to review every land asset it has and make more use of those assets to support housing.

Trade in the market.

It is not the councils role to become a major housing owner.  It is the councils role to influence the housing market to ensure that good housing exists for the benefit of its rate payers.  This means that council needs to: Buy up housing that is at end of life and redevelop such and then resell that asset back into the market, either directly or via partners.

The council must work with more partners in the “Community Housing Provider” (CHP) market.  It must seek out more CHP partners, built and rise up those partners.

It must deliver ‘competition’ in the Christchurch CHP market to keep OCHT and others accountable and competitive.

It must also ensure that the social housing market has more provider choice for the tenant community.

The council must borrow more money, more quickly, and deliver more housing and improvement to help address the current social housing waiting list (sitting at roughly 1,900 at time of writing)

The council must empower the community to join the journey.  We agree that social housing should be kept “off the rates budget”, but that doesn’t mean “kept from rate payer contribution”.  The CCC is a very mature, strong, powerful and stable civic entity.  It must use that security to the advantage of people who would like to invest into social housing but need the security of knowing that it is backed by a quality team of resources.

Stability in the rental market

Stability in the long term rental market is delivered by the availability of quality housing.

Some elected members, represent massive property holdings, may will see the council as competing with those interests, are they considering that without competition, they are not being held to account and their customers are now actively and aggressively attacking them via many vectors, costing every rate and taxpayer more.

The council needs to review the style of housing it delivers in its current program.  The OCHT CE tells us, and we agree, that the style of housing they have is not appropriate for a range of social housing tenants, specifically prison reintegration, but clearly not limited too.

The council must put in motion a project to invest in a range of housing solutions, one and two bedroom, 5 and 6 bedroom (which is where the highest demands are).  Some of this housing simply needs to be urgently purchased in the open market while others need to be build.

The council needs to become much more diverse in the range of borrowing it makes to fund such projects.  While it is ideal to borrow at OCR +25 base points (and sell to CHP’s at +40 base points), this is NOT acceptable in the market while also addressing the level of work that needs to be done and accepting the interests of a retail commercial banking sector that under pins most borrowing and property security in New Zealand at present.  Our view is that the council needs to be involved in at least $1.3 billion dollars of the market, that is to much to only load on the LGA fund and to much direct market influence in the banking sector.

The council still has to much property that is not being used quickly enough for the benefit of a growing community.  Our observation is that the council does not have enough resource on staff to effectively manage the level of resources it has, so those resources are sitting idle while some in our community sleep in cars and motels.

The council must recognise the importance that housing quality and presentation has on mental health.  In 2019 it took us months to have rubbish removed from the Poulson Street complex.  Some complexes still need cosmetic updates that are well over due.

The council must keep front of mind that while a typical council worker is gone from their home for 9 hours a day and elected members may be gone from their homes for much longer, social housing tenants may not leave their front door for days on end (which is more time inside than a prison inmate spends inside, even on full lock down).  Employers pay for keeping workers warm for 8 hours a day while workers only need to think about home heating for 12 hours a day (assuming time away from the home is not just spent working).  Complex social housing tenants must heat their spaces 24 hours a day.

While council has improved the heating choices for many it needs to grow the amount of housing stock more quickly, as our population grows and ages, than the current 100 units that OCHT has committed to at present.

Christchurch has a cold climate compared to Auckland or Northland.  However we also have a very much richer and wealthy community too, and more access to low cost energy.

CLIMATE EMERGENCY!

In this decade we have to pivot in social housing.  As a council, you have the capacity to take a housing lead, influence and make a much more significant difference than you currently are. 

You are the city wide leader (if not the national leader) in housing complex development. 

Every new complex has to be installed with solar energy that offsets the power costs of every tenant.

Some complexes need to be designed with ‘complex heating’, that like a retirement home, keeps the entire complex at a living temperature no matter the actions of the tenant. 

HOW MUCH HOUSING SHOULD CCC PRODUCE

At the time of writing there are more than 1900 on the social housing waiting list.  We understand this doesn’t mean that we actually need 1900 new homes delivered this next year.  We understand that some of these people need to be housed in flatting situations, making better use of existing stock.

However CCC needs a much more powerful leaver on the housing market in Christchurch to benefit the whole community, at present it doesn’t have that.  It does in transport, it does in power, it does in telecommunications, it doesn’t in housing, yet housing is the most important of all of those.

We have called for 8,000 total CCC social homes.  Given the city has 174,000 rating units, 65% home ownership nationally, and a growing population, we don’t think this is unreasonable.

We would like to see council raise up to $1 billion dollars in the market to support this vision.

CCC needs to build with more partners and build a more extensive range of products.  Not everyone wants to work with OCHT to work with CCC.  We believe that those working with OCHT also need employment choice while continuing to work with CCC.

CCC needs to urgently raise $400 million to support its building program in the current/next LTP term. 

CCC needs to target a “1000 bed per year” program in this LTP.  (That’s 10,000 beds over 10 years or a mix of 1, 2, 5 and 6 bedroom homes, which is where the current demand is.)

OVERALL OBJECTIVE

The over all goals and KPI’s of the council should be:

  • Make effective use of every asset our community has
  • Support the elected government objectives to provide a stable housing market by protecting the market from ‘fringe tenants’ (by spreading the burden of those folk equally across the whole community).
  • Deliver CHP/Social Housing Provider choice in the market
  • Keep rents stable by ensuring that rental tenants have a choice
  • Deliver a quality level that sets a city wide bench mark as the minimum standard that our community will accept for shelter.
  • Work with the commercial money markets to their benefit.

WHO ARE WE

oursocialhousing.nz is a special interest website created by Don Gould and Stephen McPakie to present information to the community about Christchurch social housing.  It’s focus started with data from the Christchurch City Council but has grown to included others.

We have also presented a host of articles on market and data analysis with views on social housing in our city.

You should review our web site:  oursocialhousing.nz

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FIRE THEM ALL – GET NEW MANAGEMENT – HOLD THEM TO ACCOUNT – SELL IT OFF

Recently we’ve had some frustrated tenants posting their frustrations on our Facebook posts and criticize our response to OCHT Facebook posts. These posts are often accompanied by naming both current and past staff from both council and the trust, something that has bothered me but I’ve let it lay mostly quietly.

Some folk pointed me at Tenancy Tribunal judgements, which was more than interesting, so tonight I thought I’d write some response to those call outs along with an update on some on going conversations I’ve had over the past year or so.

JUST SELL IT!

I’ve read calls to just sell the whole housing business to someone new a few times. I know how that game works and I also know it never ends well for the customers, mostly ends well for the sales folk and some times the investors, just ask rate payers about the million dollars spent to “not sell CityCare”.

As I’ve written in the past, I haven’t typically got involved in lobbying on such small projects as this. My experience and interest has been in the telecommunications industry where the companies are worth billions and have millions of customers. I’ve watched for decades as telcos buy and sell customers, build massive infrastructure, lure in new customers with hot deals then turn up the heat to drive ARPU as high as they can before either selling to a competitor, listing on the stock market or destroying the products with over subscription, leaving loyal customers who have build investment on top of networks to swim with the sharks.

SO I RANG BRUCE…

I rang Bruce Rendall at CCC because I recalled that we’ve had many conversations in New Zealand about selling public housing in the past and thought he’d have a better memory for it than I do, I was right…

2021-03-16 12:03 Bruce wrote:

“Yesterday you asked about the possibility of overseas ownership / operation of social housing.

This has been considered before (eg https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/93889766/three-groups-shortlisted-take-over-social-housing-in-christchurch)

The council turned its mind to this matter in 2017.  While it did not formally set a policy, the below extracts from an aborted public consultation process gives some ideas of the Council’s thinking in 2017:

A Christchurch community housing provider will bring local knowledge and experience to managing the properties and assisting the tenants. A local provider will bring greater understanding of the distinctive issues in the Christchurch social housing market resulting from the earthquakes and subsequent rebuild. They will have established relationships that will help achieve results more efficiently and quickly than a new entrant to Christchurch.”

FIRE THEM ALL!

If you know anything about employment law in this country there is nothing simple about letting people go.

I loved Donald Trump in the TV series the Apprentice. Who doesn’t just love the ‘idea’ of being the big man boss and being able to shout down a big board room table “You’re Fired”… bit of irony when the American public did just that at their last election, but we’re not in the US and civic housing isn’t a TV show, it’s a community with real people, some who live in the houses, others who’s jobs it has been to keep those homes in the best state as they can even if they’re not always the best people for the job in a constantly changing market place, in a city brought to its knees by a massive earthquake just 10 years ago.

A while ago, the mayor took me aside and commented that the housing unit wasn’t all that happy. Many had moved to OCHT, some had been left behind and many weren’t as happy as anyone would like.

GET NEW MANAGEMENT

As I said, employment law isn’t so simple as TV shows make it look, but one thing you can do is move the business around and let people make their own choices, and that’s exactly what’s happened.

Recently the ‘major maintenance’ moved from CCC to the trust for the property with the trust. I’m told that will mean that $5 million dollars of work will translate closer to $6 million dollars of value based on historic assumptions.

While the remaining civic staff were invited to apply for new roles in the trust, none did, effectively leaving 1 in the council dealing with social housing specifically.

Some of the structures are still a bit frustrating. Stephen comments that he has 5 points of contact depending on what he needs. I see both sides of this. Give the tenant a single point of contact and all they’re going to say most of the time is “Please hold caller while I check with …” while having 5 different departments means you some times bounce from place to place to get anything done. Personally I don’t know anything about the trusts IT systems but I suspect they have a problem with a poor job work flow, queuing and reporting system.

HOLD THEM TO ACCOUNT!

I was directed to Tenancy Tribunal judgements, so I had a little look. The TT don’t publish all it’s history only a two or three year snapshot, but it is searchable. When I looked, there were about 167 judgements published, so I haven’t read them all.

Before I get to the detail, I’d like to point out that the OCHT social media team invited me to attend a tenants briefing a while back where tenants were introduced to a range of agencies, including the TT. The trust has a vehicle so that tenants who have a dispute can get a resolution service to support them before they go to the TT and a service that will pay the $25 dollars it costs a tenant to go to the TT. I’ve never seen anyone in the private market get that level of support to take a case against them. That’s like ringing the guy you want to sue and asking them to pay for your lawyer and them saying “sure”.

I started with a few cases brought by the trust. The common theme in those was people who had skipped rent, though there were a few bizarre ones. In one case the tenant has been sent to prison and he was being chased for the cost of changing locks as he hadn’t been able to return every key, the trust lost that one.

I quickly moved on to the cases brought against the trust, after all, this was about holding them to account not chasing down tenants for unpaid rent. I think there were 12 cases out of 167, so it didn’t take to long to review those.

The most bizarre of those was a tenant, who won $200 in the judgement, after OCHT staff and a contractor entered their unit by mistake. That judgement would have cost the trust at least $5000 because the case had to be investigated which frankly would have been time consuming and expensive.

$200,000 TO COLLECT RENT… IS THAT WORTH IT?!

One theme that did show through from the TT judgements is that I suspect the trust is spending at least the cost of a new unit a year just chasing rents, and that’s before I consider the cost on the state for TT staff.

I didn’t do the math and compile a detailed list of payments from the judgements, nor have I bothered to ask the trust what it’s judgement recovery rates is.

What I did note was a common theme of two staff who appear to be camped at the TT offices each week.

On holding to account, this is an issue that I raised with board members. It’s just a false economy to chase some of these funds once the tenant has moved on, in some cases to jail.

It raises the question of just writing that debt off like so many private landlords do and investing energy in providing more quality housing at a lower cost.

IN CLOSING

My review of civic housing in this city is that it’s taken a massive change in the past 5 years to the overall benefits of tenants while not directly costing rate payers more, though also not making any return for their share in civic resources, though housing people who make end up costing our community more in other ways if we demanded more return.

Stephen’s campaign to get proper heating and cooling came across the line because he personally held the trust to account by telling his story in a very public space. He shared personal information about himself and his situation that many would not have. For his efforts thousands of people got $16 million dollars allocated.

Between Stephen and myself we held the council and trust to account to deliver that work, in spite of Covid 19 lock downs, that heating made it in place for last winter.

The suggestion that this portfolio should be sold is just silly. The idea has been canvased and the correct call has been made which is in both tenant and Christchurch interests.

Following the last civic election, the OCHT board has some extremely competent civic members on it right now, people who take our calls, who we can have very frank and blunt conversations with, without fear of being hung up on and blocked from communications.

Frankly I get better response from Bruce Rendall at CCC, Bob Hardie at OCHT and elected/appointed civic board members than I’ve ever seen in the telco sector. To suggest these guys aren’t open to being held to account is just silly, they are.

Finally, Stephen and I built this website, Mr Google shares it before it shares the trusts website. I get calls and emails from the police, corrections and others looking for tenants and support, we clearly have a voice, and if a broke tenant who was living in a car and a random member of the public can get a voice so can anyone who cares to put in a sensible effort.

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OCHT DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH CASH TO BUILD FASTER

https://www.facebook.com/NicolaWillisMP/posts/1075263449617564

This is the Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust. They say they could build twice as many houses immediately if the Government made one small policy change. – Nicola Willis MP – 22 March 2021

Recently I’ve been accused of not being critical enough on OCHT. Frankly I found that accusation a bit unfair and I think there’s at least one board member who will agree…

This post on Facebook by National party housing spokes person Nicola Willis, just made my head explode.

You see, I sat with trust CEO Cate Kearney and her policy lead a while back and talked about her plan to target 100 homes a year being the limit of their capacity, now I hear it could be 200 homes but they’re just lacking the funds to do it.

This does my head in because I have every idea just how much cash there is in the market right now. I could point to half a million in private capital which could translate to $10 million with bank borrowings.

I was calling Bruce Rendall, CCC’s head of property on an other issue not long after and he was very quick to point out that the council has been working on a number of other options to help the trust secure more funding (that was the day I wished I recorded calls or simply asked for more detail via email) and I suspected he’d seen the same post from Willis and had been expecting someone’s call, if not mine.

Cr Phil Mauger is on the OCHT trust board, understands property development well and got the thick end of my tongue later in the week….

I pointed out that in the 9 months that public officials have been “dithering in process” (and please note that I don’t hold Bruce to account for this, he is but one cog in a system that is the job of elected members to control the pace of) Williams Corporation, the biggest housing developer in Christchurch by numbers, have raised $65 million in the private market and delivered over 300 new builds in city (let’s put that in perspective, two kids and their mums v’s the capacity of a council with a $13 billion dollar value).

Phil pointed out that Matthew (WC) pays significantly more for his money (10%) than OCHT/CCC. He’s right! However, Matthew’s customers don’t pay much more once the build is complete and they have keys.

In my view, the trust has become greedy and expects everything for nothing (well 0.4% while the rest of us are paying 4% and Matthew is paying 10% is just about nothing). When a chief plans a menu they understand that the spuds are cheap while the meat cut will be expensive.

CCC held an engagement meeting on the updated social housing policy draft which I attended. Bruce commented in conversation that treasury simply hadn’t allocated enough funds to meet policy demands in the CHP sector (or something like that, again, must record conversations!… that’s what real reporters do!).

My view is that government has given ‘us’ as much money as they’re going to. I suspect that the banking sector is looking at how the government has been handing out ‘free money’ via the LGA fund in direct competition to its retail business to take customers from its borrowing business to build competing assets on state land while using public funds to find the customers (the 22,400 on the social housing waiting list) and is getting more than grumpy.

Frankly the more I look at the housing market and the LGA usage, it looks like a race to the bottom with the banks winning (quite happy to take some short term losses) with private market renters taking the biggest whack as they can’t get IRRS rents and soaring property values are driving their rents through the roof.

Elected members are always very quick to point out that social housing is ‘off the rates budget’ but never venture to understand if the community would like to use its ability to develop an investment opportunity such as we’ve done with power, airports, ports and other community assets. Civic housing is currently a $325m dollar asset, and elected members are pleased that it’s “off the rates budget”, guys, it should be delivering 10% ROI (in fact much more given the land assets we have).

There’s an opportunity here for the wider community, I’ve written about this before, it’s time to stop the dithering, pick up the pace, be willing to pay for the meat, not just the spuds, and work as a whole community!

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PART TWO – Are We Critical Enough of OCHT?

Following on from Part one – https://oursocialhousing.nz/news/are-we-critical-enough-of-ocht/

I have been so busy recently I hardly have time to follow up. Rhombus on Acheson is now open following months of hard work by the team, a restored community asset in Mairehau and I’ve been busy site clearing at my own home for a craft studio for Joanna (my wife) and building a ‘boys space’ in the loft. So I kinda owe Bruce Rendall (HEAD OF FACILITIES PROPERTY AND PLANNING at CCC) a bit of an apology because this post has been very slow in coming, unlike his response to my last post (which I personally invited).

Bruce offered some corrections to my last post, so I rang him and said that rather than just correct my post I would share his email. We also had an interesting conversation about social housing ownership issues, but that will be the subject of my next post…

I’d like to point out that I emailed Bruce at Friday, 12 March 2021 10:42 PM and he responded Monday, 15 March 2021 12:40 PM. I point this out because there is a constant narrative that CCC are poor to respond to queries and that EVERY staff member in the building is useless and should be replaced, which is simply untrue, unfair and frankly angers me some days. I’m not going to claim that Bruce is perfect, hell I have no idea, I hardly know this guy, but he is a very constant and consistent voice on social housing and spokes person in the media who engages and response quickly (frankly faster than I do!)

“

Just a few points:

1st paragraph:  The statement “so housing tenants could address the government IRRS” could confuse.  Tenants can’t access the IRRS, however, certain social landlords can.  Tenants benefit through paying Income Related Rents (see https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/housing/live-in-home/live-in-public-housing/index.html) and the landlord receives a subsidy (The IRRS)

1st paragraph: The sentence be interpreted as me saying that CCC was underinsured.  This isn’t something  that I’ve researched so I can’t make this statement.  I’d also suggest that there were quality and financial sustainability problems before the earthquakes (I have done some research on this and would point to some of the work around the proposed 2008 rent increase).  It might be better to stop at “poor”.

2nd Paragraph:  This paragraph is a bit confusing.  OCHT needs to be a separate entity (https://legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2014/0116/latest/DLM6013922.html) if it is to be eligible for IRRS.  Staff have worked hard to ensure that Councillors, tenants and the community understand that OCHT is a separate organisation, independent of Council (despite the requirements of public sector accounting).  Council cannot direct OCHT or require it to do anything outside of the contractual requirements contained in the lease and loan documents.  Council’s role is no longer a social housing provider – rather we are a property owner, with a commercial lease that allows OCHT to provide social housing. 

2nd Paragraph: Yes, the legislation could change but I don’t believe that this is likely to be for the reasons stated.  I would suspect that the Government would be more focused on how the community sector can grow social housing through the provision of new builds.  OCHT is showing that it is contributing in this space (eg https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/124522429/more-new-homes-are-being-built-in-christchurch–but-theyre-getting-smaller).  

There are a couple of typos as well – fowl (foul) and woka (waka)

“

MY TAKE ON THIS…

I did correct the typos. Thanks Bruce for the feedback!

D

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Are We Critical Enough of OCHT?

OCHT is one of 57 government credited CHP’s, born from the Christchurch City Council’s housing unit about 5 years ago. It was created, as CCC’s Bruce Rendall explains, so that housing tenants could access the government IRRS. Councils can’t access IRRS. Following the earthquakes the state of the councils social housing was very poor. While there was an insurance payout, CCC was under insured.

In my view, the arrangement of the OCHT trust is paper thin. CCC’s own legal council has been seen to caution the mayor about the abstraction the trust needs to have from CCC, and I suggest that caution is driven by an awareness that with a stroke of the pen, government could rule that the trust is nothing but the council attempting to skirt government rules, it’s an issue that has concerned me for a while.

For these reasons, I’ve been focusing on a few things. I’ve built relationships with CCC and OCHT staff in an attempt to best understand the whole space as I can. I’ve joined with some friends to form the framework to create a competing CHP and engaged with council about a level of partnering once the trust has CHP status (assuming we progress with the plan to completion). I’ve also taken care not to be to critical of OCHT, CCC or KO.

Along the way I’ve been accused of favour by not using our social media elements to promote media articles about the trust that may be seen in a dim light. Those folk are correct, there is favour in this domain.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118655632/73yearold-faces-long-wait-for-social-housing-in-christchurch

This media article highlights my greatest concern. IRRS means that tenants only pay 25% of what they earn. In the current market it means that people in social housing are much better off than those in the private market, and for the most part, they know it.

I well understand that there are some who in social housing who are very unhappy right now, frankly I think they need some perspective.

https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/healthy-homes/healthy-homes-compliance-timeframes/

“From 1 July 2023

  • All Kāinga Ora (formerly Housing New Zealand) houses and registered Community Housing Provider houses must comply with the healthy homes standards.”

CCC delivered $16 million dollars to fund delivery of heating and ventilation.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/118603572/christchurchs-social-housing-upgrades-off-to-slow-start

Stephen and I followed the progress of this project. We quietly raised our concerns about it being delayed long before media started writing articles. We expressed many concerns.

The reality is that the project got delivered well ahead of any government requirements.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/300249053/tenants-win-3000-from-landlord-for-failing-to-provide-insulation-or-repairs

For some perspective, readers should consider where the private market is at. It’s currently in the ‘stick mode’ of ‘carrot and stick’.

YOUR LANDLORD OR YOUR MUMMY?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/124211788/landlord-using-security-guards-to-defuse-tension-at-christchurch-flat-complex

A problem with social housing, and not the only one, is that they now attract social problems. Problems outlines in this article are being addressed by the trust, however in my view it’s very unclear who’s job it really is to deal with the ‘mummy and daddy’ issues.

The trusts job is to provide housing, and they do that above the required standards. However they also get involved in complex social issues dealing with people that frankly, no one wants to deal with.

https://chra.hud.govt.nz/about-chra/performance-standards-and-guidelines/

For perspective, here’s a link that details the requirements for a CHP (the trust is a CHP). It has conditions that go well beyond those on a normal landlord, who don’t have to become ‘camp mum’. It’s these requirements that drive the level of involvement OCHT has with its community.

At the same time, a large organization with a significant market influence also has to make sure it doesn’t fall fowl of many other laws, including but not limited to commerce legislation.

https://comcom.govt.nz/business/avoiding-anti-competitive-behaviour/taking-advantage-of-market-power

Considering all these things, don’t let my ‘apparent lack of action’ fool you. My global reach is extensive and I have every idea how to tip the whole woka over, but I’m careful not to push at anyone in social housing to hard, I don’t feel it would be helpful for the social housing community.

In the face of personal criticism I reached out to CCC’s Bruce Rendall, his full response is below, and I thank him for taking time to respond in such detail and quickly. He drafted this response within a couple of hours of my phone call.

Bruce touched on a number of elements that I have covered, less so a number of other projects I know he’s been working on as that level of detail really is academic. Over all, I personally endorse his and his teams efforts, they’re getting more done than I am and way more than many others in this country who have a lot more resources and should be doing much better.

WHY WE BUILT THIS RESOURCE

Before I close, I’d like to remind readers why Stephen and I created this platform. CCC published lots of information about social housing around the last election for candidates. It’s a $325 million dollar asset which is very hard to get your head around. We created this site to share our learning’s and help inform elected members. Stephen’s major interest has been in improving his lot and that of the community around him, and frankly he’s done an amazing job. I don’t normally lobby on projects this small. My historic ‘lobby interests’ have been centered around multi billion dollar telecommunications projects. I personally have just about no interest in childish community squabbles.

Cheers Don.

Bruce writes….

“Don

Further to our discussions, I wanted to put down in writing some quick thoughts about where we are now with the Council’s social housing portfolio.  To get there we need to think about the fundamental problem and we were in 2014/15 when decisions were made about the new delivery model.

“Social” housing is subsidised housing.  More information can be found in our Housing Policy (https://www.ccc.govt.nz/the-council/plans-strategies-policies-and-bylaws/policies/strengthening-communities-policies/housing-policy/).  The fundamental problem with Council’s portfolio (and much of the rest of local government social housing in NZ) is the subsidy or rather lack of subsidy, which has resulted in under investment in the assets. 

Local authorities are not eligible for the Government’s landlord subsides (the income related rent subsidy or IRRS), most do not use rates funding for subsidising housing, and most keep rents at a below market level for affordability reasons.   Additionally there has been a tendency to use rental returns for additional support services and growth, at the expense of maintenance and renewals.  Ultimately the lack of funds has led to deterioration in the quality of the housing. 

Various local authorities have recognised this at different times and have chosen different paths to try and address this including exiting provision.  Christchurch recognised that it needed to do something in 2014 /15, which lead to the formation of OCHT.  OCHT is eligible for the IRRS, and has progressively transitioned a portion of the portfolio from unsubsidised to subsidised.   The effect of this is more revenue, which is directed towards maintenance (eg exterior painting, major corrective repairs etc), renewals (eg roof replacements; storm water replacements) and legislated required upgrades (eg insulation, heat pumps etc).  Once we’ve lifted the standard of the portfolio to a better level, then we can start accumulating funds for replacing units.

Since 2016 we’ve installed heat pumps in all units (there are a very small number where we have multiple access refusals and have not been able to install heat pumps with agreement).  We’ve installed and upgraded insulation where we can, always with the aim of exceeding standards where ever possible.  Works continue to improve the warmth and dryness of units through draught stopping and curtain upgrades.  Painting programmes, which had been put on hold while we delivered our earthquake repair work, have restarted.  We don’t just paint for aesthetics, although we get feedback from tenants that making sure the home looks better has a positive impact on how they feel.  Painting also helps extend the life of the building and helps keep the property dry.

We’re also looking at doing things differently.  OCHT have already made savings in our reactive maintenance (ie repairs when things are broken), and we are jointly  about to make changes to how we deliver scheduled (eg fire system inspections), planned maintenance (eg reactive or infrequent maintenance where we can plan when it is delivered), and renewal works.  Our modelling suggests further savings.  All savings and increased revenue must be used to lift the standard of the portfolio to an acceptable point.

The feedback from the tenant satisfaction surveys shows that this extra investment is having benefits.  We’re also in the process of developing better condition information across the portfolio, which will help us track the quality of units.

While I’m positive, I do know that we are on a journey and there is a long way to go.  We know that there are complexes that have reached the end of the useful life and we should replace them, but we haven’t accumulated enough money to do this yet. 

We’re using a variety of techniques  to address this issue.  We have closed some units where it is too risky for tenants and spending money to lift standards would be a waste.  This approach is used sparingly because we are very aware of the growing waiting list for public housing.  Other site we do works to ensure that the assets are safe and meet legal requirements, but try to limit other expenditure.   Together with OCHT we look at ways to fund and finance new builds, which has resulted in 159 units competed or in construction, and another minimum 72 in planning.

I hope that this gives you some comfort that we are heading in the right direction to improve our social housing

Bruce

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Exciting Social Housing In The North

This week Joanna and I caught up with Rhys Head from Homeco to have a look at his Iwi backed social housing project for Mana Waitaha Trust in Woodend.

Prefabricated in Homeco’s factory and assembled on site, these two and three bedroom homes are HomeStar 8 rated, ready for PV solar panels and with EV charger ready car ports.

Laminated timber from Nelson and overseas producers is prefabricated in to standardised panels. Rhys explained to us that he is keen to see a production plant for the chip wood paneling they use but first we have to establish a local market which is one of the goals for this factory.

The entire home is staged in the factory meaning that stakeholders (normally clients) can walk through the building and request changes before it’s even on the site.

The completed walls, on site, have an Energy Star rating of 8. R2.6 bats combined with a range of other materials to push the external structure to a very insulated construction with very limited internal air changes means that the heat you put into the home doesn’t escape, a concern for tenants with very limited income.

The entire home can be packed into a 20 foot shipping container. The benefit of this is creating the ability to ship the buildings around the country by rail or world by ship. These panels already have all the insulation installed.

On site, the roof is built, on the foundation slab, before the walls are delivered and then craned on to the erected walls. This means that the entire structure can be closed in within a day. The benefit is faster construction meaning lower cost while also making a nicer space for everyone to work.

Let’s Look Inside On Site

Massive amounts of storage, accessible bathroom, wide doorways for wheelchair access, power points for your EV charger, tiny heat pumps (because you just don’t need a bigger one!), large kitchens complete with dishwasher, fibre ready, high stand toilets and the most magical windows you’ve ever seen!

The double glassed windows on this build will be triple on the next construction. These windows are made from recyclable plastic so they’re warm to the touch. They open in two different ways (a video of this will be on the site next week), meaning that you can open them fully in summer when you’re home or peg them ‘ajar’ with confidence that the home is secure.

Rhys has a show room in the city with all the different building technology and construction plans on display. His passion is building homes that are kinder to people and the environment. For example you may have noticed that these social homes had car ports rather than locked up garages. He explained to me that is so that a garage doesn’t get transformed into someones ‘low quality bedroom’.

Started in July 2019 and completed to this stage by December 2019, these units are fast to build and finish which delivered a much lower cost meaning that much more value can be delivered for social housing tenants. Oh, and if you’re wondering about that plastic clip board in the top of the image, it’s not a clip board, but more about that in a future post!

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MORE INFORMATION REQUESTS

This morning I sent CCC two more information requests about social housing, the are as follows.

SOCIAL HOUSING NUMBERS

Further to the housing numbers published for the election, could I have an updated version?

I am specifically interested in the number of closed units.

Can you also provide a more detailed list of the 200 closed units, the reason for closure and the current intention for each.

I am wanting to update the data on our site at www.oursocialhousing.nz to keep it current and useful.

I would also like to know it it is possible to get regular change data (eg monthly) so we can keep it more current.

HEAT PUMP DELIVER SCHEDULE

Following on from this weeks obvious and well publicized confusion, can you please advise the follow.

1. An updated, month by month delivery plan.

2. Advice on when the venterlation systems will be installed.

3. Who were the successful contractors

4. When is it planned that progress will be reviewed in the first ~400 units to consider retendering.

5. Is the performance/ work load of the project management team going to be reviewed/monitored to ensure adequate resources so as not to encounter road blocks?

Could I also have a copy of the public tender documents published on GETS ~11 NOV 19 (YES I’m paying more attention to GETS emails now 😉 🙂 )

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GOVERNMENT IS BORROWING SO SHOULD WE

The Government has quietly lifted the borrowing limit for the newly formed Kāinga Ora social housing agency by $4.05 billion to $7.1 billion so it can build and refit almost 4,800 more state houses on top of the 6,400 already planned. – Bernard Hickey – Newsroom

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/01/20/991131/kinga-oras-borrowing-limit-lifted-by-4b#

With the growing amount of international investment in our residential housing market, it makes good sense for government to invest in housing our most vulnerable.

I’ve been contending for some time that CCC needs to borrow up large and build more social housing in serious numbers.

We haven’t built in serious numbers for 45 years. With building products having a 50 year target life, our stock is coming to end of life.

CCC’s “Project 8011” is dragging and not getting the housing numbers in the CBD that are needed, something everyone seems to agree.

Council needs to be taking a lead with at least 10 social housing projects with 20 units each, contributing at least 200 units this year.

Social housing make council good money and reduces everyone’s rates so every citizen wins!

Council needs to invest up to $1.3b in 6,500 more social housing homes.

Social housing makes council good money and doesn’t cost ratepayers.

Every citizen wins.

I believe we could borrow, build and repay within 25 years and make a $45 million dollar profit each year to off set rate.

It’s important to me that we provide our citizens with the best possible housing.

We collect GST from tourists everyday in Christchurch and social housing is a perfect vehicle for pulling that tax money back into our community in a way that makes sure every citizen gets a return.

Some will argue that this would put council in competition with the private market. It’s just not true. The private market just isn’t interested in this part of the market. The market is also expanding, so council is only ‘joining’ the market.

Some contend that social housing is a state not civic role. Two points, keeping the state in check means providing competitive pressure.

Secondly, state profits go back to the state. It’s important to remember that many social housing tenants are hard working locals, like Stephen, who earn local money and we want profits returned to our community.

Civic social housing profits all our citizens.

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Weekly Update #4 – Waiting and Mailing Lists

I have now installed a forms feature on the site which now lets us start to collect information.

I can see reason for two different lists

MAILING LIST

Not everyone who’s interested in social housing wants to be checking in on Facebook or the web site, so a mailing list is important.

I’m also keen to understand as much about people interesting in social housing, as I can. So I’m going to propose a mailing list that also lets you tell us a bit about yourself, or not! 🙂

WAITING LIST

In last years, last council meeting, we heard that there are 830 people on the social housing waiting list, but who are you? What are you looking for, what is your situation and where do you want to live?

So I’m proposing we’ll collect the following, or as much as you choose to share with us.

  • Name
  • Email address
  • Phone number

All of these will be optional… actually everything will be optional.

My plan is that I’ll simply qualify the quality of interest based on the level of information provided. Clearly someone who wants to give you all their information is serious about wanting something.

  • Required Bedrooms
  • Required Beds – we don’t assume that people need or want a bedroom each, but we want to know how many people you want to have living in a space.
  • Current suburb – we don’t know where you actually live, we’d just like to know where your community is.
  • Desired suburb – we assume that people have been moved around as a result of the earthquakes so we’d like to know where you’d like to live
  • Schooling – do you need to be close to a school?
  • Public Transport – do you need to be close to it?
  • Work Suburb – we want to understand where you need to travel to.
  • Drug use – this one’s quite important. Right now CCC have units that people have used drugs in, they simply need cleaning. The government standards have changed and for some people, they’d sooner have a more affordable home than where they are, so there is a case to argue that these units should be made available.
  • About you – age range, gender, health – if you’re 85 and in poor health then you need higher quality housing than I do. Double rather than single glassing and better heating, for example.
  • Current housing – we’re keen to understand people who are couch surfing, those who are simply unhappy with private accommodation or other reasons
  • Reason for your interest – as above, we’d like to know why you want social housing. We understand that in some causes what people really want is help to improve their situation but just don’t know where to reach. In this journey so far, Stephen and I have learnt a lot about services we didn’t know existed.

I’ll be posting this on Facebook, so I’m keen to hear your comments before we set this alight! 🙂

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Weekly Update #3 – Incoming Information and Support

ONE MORE FOR SALVATION ARMY

This week I got another private landlord to provide another unit to the Salvation Army’s offender reintegration program.

Providing good housing for reintergration is critical. Offenders who don’t have good housing can re-offend quickly and this is a path directly back to prison.

Offending creates more victims as well as causing an expensive revolving door in our courts.

DOUBLE GLASSING QUOTES

I meet with Cr Phil Maugers last week to talk about social housing moving forward.

Phil did some work on better the cost of improving a number of social houses during the election campaign.

I now have a copy of those quotes from Hagley Window Replacements. They’re not cheap at around 10% of the average cost of units.

I can see value in asking the question for living rooms on the ground floor, south sides of complexes where the winter sun will not get and cause those homes to need heating.

People want to help improve social housing in the city, this was clear from my conversations with both Phil and Collin, from Hagley.

LAND QUOTES & OTHER SOCIAL HOUSING PROVIDERS

Also of interest this week was a discussion with a large land holder in Burwood with land adjacent to Concord Place.

As I’ve traveled my recent journey into social housing, it’s become obvious to me that there is profit in this area with an ample supply of profitable tenants. I’ve been looking around the city at locations and the question of the need for a competitor to OCHT.

It seems to me that the model is now well understood and the demand for housing very much exists.

QUALITY DATA AT COUNCIL

https://christchurch.infocouncil.biz/Open/2019/11/SACRC_20191128_AGN_4065_AT.htm#PDF2_ReportName_25446

This weeks CCC Sustainability and Community Resilience Committee agenda includes a big section on social housing.

I reached out to the chair to make a short deputation on Thursday because I had a number of questions about the quality of data and information being presented to elected members and I also want to reaffirm with the council that our interest in social housing was more than just as an election stunt.

The result of this exchange has been a very productive exchange with the CCC housing manager who has invited Stephen and I to meet to talk further about housing at some point and has also provided an extensive backgrounder to improve our understanding.

QUALITY DATA AT HOUSING NEW ZEALAND

Some very useful and interesting data showed up from HNZ this week. They presented their data by census area and broke it down by ‘bedroom count’.

Big thanks to Stephen who spent some time checking the data, putting it into a spreadsheet and added ward data so I could import it into the database to let us compare and consolidate with the council data.

In presenting this data for your consideration, these are the things that occurred to me.

  • The social housing portfolio is large and getting a good view of it isn’t easy.
  • For good governance elected members should constrain to looking at stock in their own ward as a starting point
  • Members need to consider the condition and quantity in their ward and the need.
  • CCC data doesn’t present number of bedrooms, so it’s hard to compare with HNZ data.
  • A useful measure of service is bedrooms, not just dwellings
  • We don’t know where the ‘Other social housing providers’ units are

Notes:

  • The HNZ data columns are showing 0,1,2,3,4,5+ rooms per dwelling
  • Papanui includes 18 ‘zero’ bedroom dwellings in the HNZ data, we never asked why.

OUR SOCIAL HOUSING, NOT JUST CCC HOUSING

As you can see, we are starting to get a more full picture of the state of social housing in our city.

Our aim to to better understand the bottom rung of housing in our city to best inform ourselves and others around housing policy and rise up the state of social housing.