Providers seek $2mfor 25 homes
Two Nelson community housing providers are seeking $2 million in seed money from the Nelson City Council to help build 25 new homes for the region.
Nelson Tasman Housing Trust and Habitat for Humanity Nelson presented a proposal to the council yesterday asking it to activate phase two of the Housing Reserve.
This would mean the council paying out $1m each as a capital grant to the two community housing providers.
Those funds would provide leverage for the organisations to build another 25 new affordable homes for the city.
Nelson Tasman Housing Trust director Carrie Mozena said both organisations had access to land they could develop.
Habitat for Humanity Nelson has been in discussions with the Unite Church to build a complex of 15-plus affordable rental townhouses and apartments on the church’s property on the corner of Rutherford St and Examiner St. The housing would be for people in the Nelson community.
Mozena said the council grant was just a portion of the full development cost.
Those funds would effectively leverage other donations and other grants from the Government, or other funding organisations, to enable the development.
‘‘It’s not the full build cost, it’s a fraction of the development cost. That contribution enables us to demonstrate to other funders and other donors, [and say] ‘look, we’ve got the NCC behind this, you come to the party’.’’
Mozena said the upfront funding was quite crucial, because it lowered the cost of borrowing.
Both organisations have access to finance, through commercial lending institutions, ‘‘but to deliver genuinely affordable rentals, below market rentals for people on low incomes, you cannot do that if the cost of borrowing from the bank is so high if you don’t have enough rental income to service the interest on the loan’’, Mozena said. ‘‘Our method is to raise money upfront, from local government, from central government, private donors, and then that reduces the cost of borrowing from a commercial lender.’’
Mozena said as charitable trusts and organisations regulated by the government, they could guarantee their longevity, and also that the homes developed would be operated long term as affordable housing, in the form of below-market rentals.
Ministry of Social Development public housing register figures in Nelson and Tasman had almost doubled in the past three years to 426 households, she said, and NTHT research indicated an additional 485 households didn’t qualify for public housing but were in dire need of affordable housing.
The housing register records the number of applicants not in public housing who have been assessed as eligible and who are waiting to be matched to a suitable property.
‘‘The housing need is huge,’’ Mozena said. ‘‘Sometimes we may get a dozen calls in a week from families who are desperate.
‘‘Sometimes it’s working families, sometimes it’s new migrants, former refugees who just can’t cope in their cold damp rental anymore, or it’s parents with children trying to live in caravans, or it’s older people who’ve come to Nelson to be near family, but they can’t live with family because the house is too crowded, and they’re living in their car. The stories are heartbreaking.’’
The NCC Housing Reserve is a fund of $12m established in November 2020 following the council’s sale of 142 community housing units to Kāinga Ora.
The council approved phase one of the Housing Reserve, a $2m grants programme, in October 2021, which leaves $10m of funding unallocated.
In Phase One, NTHT received $850,000, and Habitat for Humanity Nelson received $1m, money that enabled the building of 27 affordable homes, with a total value of $14m.
That equated to a return of investment for council of 700%, Mozena said.
‘‘Those funds are being used to deliver what we said we would,’’ she said.
‘‘We want to see more visible progress on the ground.’’
Mozena said as much as 30% of Nelson’s population were people on low incomes: relying on superannuation, or working families, whose jobs were low wage, part time, and seasonal.
‘‘When you’ve got that kind of insecure, changing income, it’s certainly a barrier to being able to buy a home and save to buy a home. But it’s also a barrier to being able to stay in a private rental and sustain that.’’
At the meeting, Mayor Rachel Reece said she wasn’t in a position to ‘‘give yays or nays’’.
‘‘But what I will do is get a sense from elected members once we’ve just had a little bit more on some of those issues around the background to the reserve, and what resolutions we’ve got,’’ she said.
‘‘The housing need is huge. Sometimes we may get a dozen calls in a week from families who are desperate.’’ Carrie Mozena