Social housing 650 short

Taskforce: City will get worse

DUNEDIN is failing to meet a massive demand for social housing and the city is already facing a shortfall of more than 600 housing units.

An interim report from the Mayor’s Taskforce for Housing found there needed to be 650 more social and community units just to meet current demand.

The taskforce was established at the start of the year to make recommendations to the Dunedin City Council on what the city’s housing issues were and how they could be remedied.

Made up of representatives from the Dunedin City Council, Ngai Tahu, community housing providers, University of Otago, central government, social service agencies, real estate industry and the Southern District Health Board, the group will present the interim report to the council next week.

Demand for social and community housing was identified as the group’s top priority, but calculating the exact number of people in need had been difficult.

Using information from the council, Housing New Zealand and social agencies, the taskforce came to 650 units as the best estimate.

Salvation Army Dunedin ministry leader David McKenzie said the demand would come as a surprise to many Dunedin residents but it was real and needed to be addressed urgently.

As a member of the taskforce,

the Salvation Army and other social agencies were tasked with providing an accurate figure for the number of people who needed housing, Mr McKenzie said.

Increasing rental prices and population in the city were exacerbating the problem as more people on lower incomes were priced out of the market, he said.

But there was now a real urgency from the agencies involved to fix the issue and the taskforce had led to great collaboration, he said.

Included in the report are more than 20 recommendations covering everything from the development of more social housing to the lobbying of the Government for more assistance.

Taskforce chairman Cr Aaron Hawkins said the group’s final report would offer more ‘‘concrete’’ recommendations and would likely include requests for financial support from the Government and greater investment by the council.

Support from the Government not only needed to be financial but also needed to include changes to its subsidies and supplements for people on low incomes, Cr Hawkins said.

For example, if the Government’s accommodation supplement and incomerelated rent subsidy were made available to people living in council housing there would be more of a incentive for the council to invest, he said.

The report showed the city’s housing problems were complex and required a collaborative approach, not just from local and central government, but also social agencies and the private sector.

A final report is expected to be presented to the council in mid2019.