Mayoral taskforce says Wellington council housing must support ‘vulnerable’ tenants

Wellington’s mayoral taskforce has told the city council that support for struggling tenants should be baked into the capital’s new social housing model.

Earlier in the year the Wellington City Council voted to move its struggling housing assets into a community housing provider (CHP) – a model which will allow new tenants to access a Government subsidy limiting their rent to 25% of their income. Existing council tenants will be excluded from the subsidy unless they start a new tenancy, but they said they will continue to fight for it.

In the meantime, the council’s plan is to support existing tenants until the tenancies turn over and more tenants become eligible for the subsidy.

Council housing tenant and taskforce member Rosie Ngakopu said moving to a CHP was “quite scary and it’s something new”. As an advocate for tenants, she said it was important that vulnerable tenants who aren’t educated and have disabilities were taken care of in the transition to the CHP.

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The mayoral taskforce on social housing was established in October 2021 to look at the options for council housing, which continues to bleed funds to the tune of $30,000 each day. On Wednesday afternoon the taskforce reported back on the new council housing model, recommending that existing tenants are not disadvantaged and a Tenants’ Association is resourced and supported.

Councillor and taskforce member Tamatha Paul described the report as “a seed”. “It’s the beginning of conversation and a bigger piece of work around social housing. Because at the end of the day, there’s no solving the housing crisis if you don’t have social housing.”

Deputy Mayor Sarah Free described the decision to create a CHP as reaching a “crunch point”. The costs were forecast to leap to $130,000 per day within ten years if nothing was done to change the model.

Mayor Andy Foster described social housing as “a pit that’s getting deeper, and deeper, and deeper. We had to make a change.”

The CHP should have been established years ago to give new tenants access to the income-related rent subsidy, Foster said, decrying a “terrible” decision by the previous council not to look into it.

He pointed to Ōtautahi Christchurch, which established a CHP in 2016 and now has 40% of its tenants receiving the rental subsidy .

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago – or five or six years ago. The second best time is now,” Foster said. Once it gets going, the CHP will be able to look at new locations and opportunities for council housing where the council was unable to do this.

Currently council rent prices are tied to the market rent, meaning that if the council upgrades run-down social housing, rents will increase because the properties are more valuable. Even without those improvements tenants are struggling to pay rent– one single mother renting a council unit was paying 86% of her income on rent.

Taskforce member Reverend Stephen King from St Peter’s on Willis said the questions about funding and why the Government hasn’t extended the rent subsidy to council tenants were a distraction from the real issue: council tenants are struggling.

“It’s easy to get distracted with other things. At the end of the day, we’re talking about 3000 people.”

The model and rules for the new CHP, an independent organisation not in council control, will be voted on by the council on Thursday. The current plan includes protections and rental support for the 3000 existing council housing tenants.

The council will also consider using $7 million of Three Waters “better off” funding to support existing council tenants. Foster said this was justified because the funding was targeted at “wellbeing” and that included vulnerable tenants.