Govt pays $3m a week to cover rents, mortgages
Fulltime workers among thousands receiving housing top-up
Nearly $3 million a week is being spent helping thousands of people in the Bay of Plenty keep a roof over their heads amid the region’s deepening housing crisis.
Thousands across the region qualify for the Accommodation Supplement — a non-taxable benefit to help pay for rent, board or the costs of owning a home.
The latest figures from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development show $2,907,599 a week was handed out across the region in accommodation supplements in the last financial quarter of last year.
This was up $138,455 a week on the quarter ending in September, and $472,330 a week on the quarter ending in March.
Baywide Housing Advocacy Service housing advocate and solicitor Shard Loibl said the service was seeing more people who worked fulltime needing a top-up from Work and Income.
The numbers illustrated the rental crisis, and the supplement was not keeping pace with Tauranga’s rapidly rising rents, he said. “So they [Work and Income] give food grants to help the families too, but then limit how much they are allowed, so families then rely on the foodbank to survive.”
According to the Ministry of Social Development, 32,469 people received the accommodation supplement in the Bay of Plenty, with more than 14,880 in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty,
In Rotorua, 8592 people received this support.
The grants shot up by 3729 across the region in a year — 1845 in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty, and 1254 in Rotorua.
The most someone living in Tauranga could get was between $165 and $305, including solo parents with two or more children. The median rent in Tauranga was $580 and $520 in the Western Bay of Plenty.
The most someone could get in Rotorua is between $80 and $160 while the median rent was $465.
Accessible Properties general manager Vicki Mclaren said the accommodation supplement invested money in the wrong place.
The model was an inefficient use of resources, with a significant investment in temporary and emergency accommodation — at a high social cost, Mclaren said.
The figures were “deeply worrying but not surprising” and reflected the scarcity of rentals and growing desperation for housing.
This was “out of kilter” with increasing rental costs and added to what she described as a misplaced level of government investment in temporary emergency accommodation — mainly motels.
“As with any system there are winners and losers and as is often the case, the vulnerable in our communities pay the price.”
She said they had been working successfully with emergency and transitional housing providers to move clients into long-term social housing.
The Pukehinahina Project, the