400 social housing units for Christchurch
A Christchurch housing trust plans to build at least 400 new social housing units over the next 10 years, but it won’t be enough to meet demand.
The first of the new units would open by the end of this year and 40 were expected to be tenanted by the end of 2020, Otautahi Community Housing Trust (OCHT) chief executive Cate Kearney said.
Social housing demand was predicted to grow as more people retired without owning a home and were expected to struggle in the private rental market. The Salvation Army’s Taking Stock report, released last year, said Christchurch would need 180 new social housing units a year for the next 10 years to meet demand.
About 250 people were already on the waiting list for one of Christchurch City Council’s 2478 social housing units.
A council report on growing social housing said the council would need to build an additional 50 units a year for 10 years, at a cost of $20 million annually, if it wanted to maintain its 30 per cent share of the social housing market.
However, the same report said the council could not afford to build the units because its policy was not to use rates money to fund social housing and the income from social housing was not enough to fund new builds.
Councillor Glenn Livingstone wanted that policy changed as he believed council should be using ratepayer money to build more social housing and he wanted the council to discuss that with ratepayers. ‘‘People will get upset with me, but I do believe in my heart of hearts we should be paying.’’
Livingstone said there were huge economic benefits to having enough adequate social housing.
The council was already facing pressure to limit rate rises and when asked if the council could afford to spend ratepayers’ money on expanding its social housing portfolio, Livingstone asked if the council could afford to spend the $250m it had already budgeted for a new stadium.
Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel said social housing was important, but she did not want ratepayers’ money used to fund it.
‘‘There are a number of challenges the city faces at the moment … We have to look carefully at priorities and spending.’’
Dalziel believed OCHT could take up the challenge to build social housing. ‘‘I’ve got 150 per cent confidence in the trust’s ability to deliver quality services to the residents and hopefully they are able to take up that role.’’
The day-to-day management of the council’s social housing units was taken over by OCHT in 2016, after the council set up the trust so it could access extra revenue through the Government’s Income-Related Rent Subsidy.
As part of the agreement, the council decided to capitalise the trust with $50m of social housing assets. The council was transferring ownership of 350 units to the trust, including the site of the former Brougham Village.
The assets included bare land, units that needed redevelopment and units that were tenanted to provide an income stream.
Kearney said the trust had been working on plans to create new units for a year and would eventually build 50 a year. ‘‘It’s a slow build up, [but] once we are there, I think we can churn them out at 50 a year without any problem.’’
The developments would be funded by bank loans.
The first 40 homes would include a mix of new builds and existing homes originally built for temporary quake housing. The council bought 42 houses from the Government last year and transferred ownership to OCHT, which has until 2021 to relocate them from Linwood Park. Homes would be scattered around the city where there was a need.