Strathmore resident Daisy Taua says she has lost three lounge suites and three mattresses to black mould in the five years she's lived in her Kāinga Ora flat. Photo: RNZ / Rachel Helyer-Donaldson
The government is set on shaking up the way social housing is provided in Aotearoa, but the time it is taking to make these changes is leaving dozens of people in dire need of a healthy home, says a Wellington MP.
Thursday marks a year since the Housing Minister announced $140 million of investment into 1500 social homes, and it will be another 18 months until they are all completed.
In January, Charlotte Smith and the five tāmariki under her care were evacuated from their mould-ridden and structurally unsafe home next to Wellington Zoo, and transferred to a four-bedroom apartment.
It was the second home in 16 years living in social housing that she had been evacuated from. Each time her young, healthy baby - first her eldest child and then her youngest - has developed respiratory conditions with countless trips to the hospital emergency department as a result of mould and damp, she said. Two-year-old Wolf was onto his fourth portacot, she said.
"The first one was a metre off the ground, and I found mould underneath, on his mattress. It was happening again, and that's why it was so triggering."
The new apartment did not have mould, but it cost an extra $165 per week, which Smith could not afford. A tenant of a community provider, Smith now hoped to get into a Kāinga Ora house.
She was one of 30 constituents in the Rongotai electorate, which covers Wellington's southern and eastern suburbs, who had asked local MP Julie Anne Genter, of the Greens, for help with their housing situation in the past year.
They included individuals and families, both in emergency housing and on the transfer list, waiting to be put into housing or one that is more suitable.
Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Genter said one elderly couple was living in a house that was inaccessible and mould-ridden. It was affecting their health, she added, yet they had been been on the transfer waitlist for nine months with no updates.
Thirty inquiries "may not sound like a lot", said Genter. "But in the context of a community where you have a severe need for healthy housing, this is very material, and it makes a huge difference to people's lives when they can get adequate housing."
Strathmore resident Daisy Taua said she had lost three lounge suites and three mattresses to black mould in the five years she's lived in her Kāinga Ora flat. Bathroom ventilation, installed by the housing agency, had helped, said Taua, who suffered from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, making her particularly susceptible to mould and cold. But she slept on the couch because the downstairs bedroom was "like an icebox in winter".
Kainga Ora regional director for Greater Wellington Vicki McLaren said "extensive work to remediate a mould issue" had been done in Daisy Taua's bathroom in 2023 and she had not raised any concerns to the agency about mould at the property since then. "If there are ongoing issues with mould or cold in the home, we strongly encourage Ms Taua to contact us so we can address them."
McLaren said Kainga Ora was aware of Taua's health conditions and continued work to find another home for her to relocate to "however there are no suitable available properties to offer her at this time".
Healthy, safe and affordable housing in Wellington was extremely difficult to get into, said Genter. "Yet it's really, desperately, needed because we have so many people who are living in inadequate social housing. Whether you're on the streets looking to be placed into a home or if you're on the transfer waitlist it is so challenging and hard our constituents."
At the heart of the problem, said Genter, was the government's policy of putting housing developments on hold or under review.
In the Rongotai electorate alone, six Kainga Ora developments - the equivalent of 215 homes - had been put on hold since December 2023.
Genter said the government had "turned off the pipeline for new healthy state houses".
It was not a numbers game, she said. "Each one of those is a person or a family whose everyday quality of life will be affected by having access to healthy housing, or not."
McLaren said those developments remained under assessment, with decisions on individual projects, including those in Rongotai, to be made over the coming months, "although some sites will potentially need to wait for decisions beyond 2025-2026".
"It's important to understand that we continue to deliver new homes while we are assessing some projects to ensure value for money, and that we are delivering in areas most needed ... This includes 44 homes delivered in Wellington city [this financial year]."
Housing Minister Chris Bishop (L) and Associate Minister for Housing Tama Potaka. Photo: Louis Collins
Last month the Minister and Associate Minister for Housing, Chris Bishop and Tama Potaka, surprised many when they announced the bulk of funding to build a thousand social homes, would go to five of the country's 80-plus community housing providers (CHPs).
Of the 500 homes already underway, just 17 were for Wellington, in the Lower Hutt suburb of Wainuiomata.
Dwell Housing Trust chief executive Elizabeth Lester, whose organisation missed out on the funding, said the ministry had told her that Pōneke "was not a priority right now".
For local housing providers that felt like a "kick in the teeth", she added. One of Dwell's projects was Gordon Place, for 26 social homes in the suburb of Newtown, where homelessness was a visible and increasing issue.
"Local housing providers are the best placed organisations to address those specific community needs and yet it looks like nothing going to be happening in our local community here in Wellington [city]."
Housing Minister Chris Bishop said the government was committed to addressing New Zealand's housing crisis and was taking action, including in Wellington.
"We are focusing on the fundamentals of housing supply, which is land supply and infrastructure funding and financing."
In the current financial year Kāinga Ora had already delivered 191 social homes in the Wellington region and had another 58 under construction, he added. "As well as all of this, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development is working with strategic partner Te Āhuru Mōwai to finalise their delivery schedule for social homes in the Wellington region, and we'll have more to say about this in due course."
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