Hon Chris Bishop
Minister of Housing
Hon Tama Potaka
Associate Minister of Housing 

The Government is on track to deliver the 1,500 social homes funded through Budget 2024 and has confirmed strategic partnerships with five Community Housing Providers (CHPs).

“In Budget 2024, the Government committed $140 million in new funding for 1,500 new social homes to be provided by CHPs. We are on track to get these much-needed homes delivered by 30 June 2027,” Housing Minister Chris Bishop says.

“Of the 1,500 social homes, 500 are being delivered through projects previously identified by CHPs as potential social homes. Funding has been approved for 218 places under this pathway, which we are calling “maintaining momentum”.

“Under the maintaining momentum pathway, contracting is done on a project-by-project basis. This means, if a CHP has three developments they will need to go through the application and approval process three times and have three separate contracts with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

“In the short term, this was the most efficient way of getting on with delivering social homes, because CHPs had already completed some preparatory work on these projects.

“To make contracting more efficient, the Government is taking a new approach to delivering social housing – Strategic Partnerships. These partnerships will be used to allocate the majority of the remaining 1,000 places.

“Strategic Partnerships represent a more efficient contracting approach, where CHPs will have more autonomy, certainty, and flexibility to deliver social housing.

“Under Strategic Partnerships, selected CHPs will be contracted to deliver a set number of places over a specific time period. This means providers can more flexibly deliver, as long as they meet key objectives and outcomes such as unlocking economies of scale and standardisation, delivering at a quicker pace, and providing good quality, value for money homes in the places they are needed.

“This model moves away from the Government funding homes on a “project by project” basis to one that enables CHPs to spend less time going through approvals processes and more time building homes and supporting their tenants.

“Five CHPs have been selected to deliver places under the Strategic Partnership model. They were selected based on their current performance, capability, and capacity, as demonstrated by the social homes they already manage and the quality of the housing developments they have delivered to date.”

These CHPs are:

1. Accessible Properties New Zealand Limited -
2. Community of Refuge Trust (CORT)
3. Emerge Aotearoa Housing Trust
4. Te Āhuru Mōwai Limited Partnership
5. The Salvation Army

“To date, Government has committed to 661 social housing places through Strategic Partnerships – 393 of these have specific addresses identified and a further 268 have been allocated to partners based off of their capacity to deliver. Including the ‘maintaining momentum’ homes, that brings the total committed places to 879 of the 1,500 funded through Budget 2024,” Mr Potaka says.

“The typology and location of the specific places that CHPs have identified for delivery are aligned with need. For example, across maintaining momentum and Strategic Partnerships, 46% of places are one-bedroom and 38% are two-bedroom, as need across the country is dominated by those requiring smaller homes.

In terms of location, 23% of places identified so far are in the Waikato area, 21% are in Auckland, 15% are in Nelson, 14% are in the Bay of Plenty area, and the other 27% are other priority locations.

“The first places are expected to be delivered in the first half of this year, with delivery picking up as time goes on. All places will be delivered by June 2027.

“It is important to keep delivery of social housing going. By moving to a more reliable, outcome-focused partnership model, we are setting the stage for certainty for CHPs to provide social homes faster and more flexibly to individuals and whanau in need.

“The remainder of the 1,500 social homes are expected to be approved in the coming months.

“These Strategic Partnerships are intended to be lasting relationships that can adapt to housing need and funding availability over time.”

Note:

This approach builds on the Government’s recent work to level the playing between Kāinga Ora and CHPs. This includes:

• Establishing Crown lending facilities of up to $150 million for the Community Housing Funding Agency (CHFA),
• exploring a loan guarantee scheme for CHPs,
• making up to $70 million of Operating Supplement available upfront to CHPs, and
• changing contractual terms to make social housing revenue streams more attractive to lenders.

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