Mackey Moana: Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10108. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): The reason Mr Heatley that the Housing New Zealand waiting list hit 10000 when Labour was in Government was that your lot hocked off 14000 State houses to your developer mates when you were in Government in the 1990s. So let us be clear where the blame lies for the waiting list. Unlike National Labour does not hide the need by slashing the waiting list.Hon Dr Nick Smith: You had 9 years.MOANA MACKEY: We did have 9 years. We managed to rebuild nearly 9000 State houses in those years Dr Smith.This bill the Social Housing Reform (Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Amendment) Bill signals the beginning of the end for Housing New Zealand and let us be clear that is what this bill is doing. National’s reviewable tenancy policy is an utter disgrace. You can tell that National MPs do not appreciate how privileged they are to enjoy security in terms of their tenancy in terms of the fact that they have a home and they clearly do not understand that not every family in this country has that privilege. They take it for granted.The reason housing is so crucial is that it provides stability. Families can put their roots down. They can get involved in their local communities. They do not have to live in fear of not knowing where they are going to live from week to week from year to year of not knowing what schools their kids will be going to and of how many timesthey are going to be transient. Transience is one of the biggest killers of educational achievement in this country. Too many families in this country do not have the stability that they need and that Phil Heatley and Dr Nick Smith take for granted. They do not have it. They are growing up in households that are transient and that is bad for our country.What we have in this country is one Government department that has the ability to provide the stability that families need—one—and that is Housing New Zealand. We have a unique opportunity to do something incredibly important for families through a Government department and the National Government is stripping that away. What an incredibly cruel thing to do: to strip that away from the one Government department that can provide the crucial element of stability that is missing from so many children’s lives in this country.Reviewable tenancies are a cruel solution to fix what is a non-problem. This is a non-existent problem. In 2011 I have to point out Phil Heatley said that it would apply only to new tenants and that he would exclude the elderly and the infirm from that because it would be distressing for them to know that they would have to go through that process. Well that is gone now apparently. We knew back then. We said 3 years ago that it would only be a matter of time before that was extended to everyone and that is exactly what has happened.This is a non-problem because Housing New Zealand tenants were already being reviewed annually for their eligibility for the income-related rent subsidy and where their circumstances had changed tenancy managers—remember those; we used to have people who actually looked after and developed relationships with these families—would work with that family to move them on and overwhelmingly they did. When I talk to tenancy managers do you know what they said was the single biggest issue in terms of moving those families on? It was not that they refused to move like the National Government has tried to tell us. It was that they had nowhere to move to—nowhere to move to. The National Government is saying “How dare they have the audacity to not want to be homeless! How dare they dig in and say they don’t want their kids living in a garage!”. They have nowhere to go. Fix the issue of housing supply and this problem goes away and in a way that does not undermine the stability of every family living in a Housing New Zealand house currently particularly where there are children in those families.The other thing this does is scare tenants away from taking on extra hours at work because they do not know what that is going to do to their eligibility for a home. So where in the past they could go to their tenancy manager and say: “For 2 months I’ve got more work; let’s discuss it.” and know that that was not going to lead to them being evicted now they do not have that security. So people are going to turn down hours at work for fear of losing their home for fear of being made homeless and the National Party expects us to believe that this is a good policy.As I said before we do not have tenancy managers any more at Housing New Zealand. When Phil Heatley was the Minister of Housing he changed the eligibility for State housing so that it went from your inability to find housing to your ability to find housing. The test changed and it seemed like a small change at the time but let us be clear about what it did.What it meant was that the solo mother I met who went to Housing New Zealand was told that the best thing she could do—because she technically had the ability to find housing now; that test had changed—was to stop paying her rent in the private rental she was in and get herself evicted and then she would be eligible for a Housing New Zealand property. That is the scheme that Phil Heatley put in place; that is the scheme that the Hon Dr Nick Smith is continuing here. Or what about the homeless man in theshelter in Auckland? He was told that he was considered housed because he was in the night shelter. That is the Housing New Zealand policy that this Government has brought in. It is cruel it is callous and it is all part of a plan to destroy the tradition of social housing in this country and this bill continues that. Let us be very clear that that is exactly what this bill does.I now want to come to the issue of the extension of the income-related rent subsidy to the community housing sector. Yes this is something the sector has been asking for for a long time. Again let us be clear. The money that has been provided in this Budget when it is fully rolled out will cover less than 20 percent of those properties that are currently owned by the community housing sector and are providing social housing. The sector currently provides around 5000 houses and 17 percent will qualify for this. That is all the money that there is. That is not even considering any new housing. Phil Heatley goes on about them being able to do much much more in the area of social housing. Well Mr Heatley you have not even provided enough money to cover what they already do. In fact less than 20 percent of what they already do is covered by this.Annette King asked a very important question of the Minister last night. She asked whether the reviewable tenancies policy is going to apply to those tenants who are receiving an income-related rent subsidy and who are now going to be housed by the community housing sector. We had the answer in theNew Zealand Heraldthis morning: “A spokeswoman said this would include tenants in housing owned by community groups ‘wherever the Government is supporting them through income-related rents’.” So yes if someone is on an income-related rent in a community housing social provider home when they reach market rent the provider is going to have to evict those tenants.I do not know whether the Hon Dr Nick Smith has met with many of these providers yet; I know Phil Heatley did and he knows how strongly that sector believes in secure tenancies—how strongly that sector believes in the stability that secure tenancies provide. I note again from theNew Zealand Heraldtoday that “Community Housing Aotearoa co-chairwoman Lisa Woolley said her own agency Vision West Trust in West Auckland had a policy of ‘long-term tenancies’. ‘It’s all about making sure the family is stable connected to their community that their children are going to the same schools.’ ” What a cruel blow for a sector that has been calling for the extension of the income-related rent subsidy for a long time to then be told that alongside that it has to implement a dreadful callous policy of evicting tenants—evicting tenants—when they reach a market rent. Let me give you an example.Take someone with a mental health issue. Phil Heatley thought it was OK to evict people with mental health issues. In fact he relished it. He relished it. He relished evicting mental health tenants. I had a tenancy manager say to me that when they had a mental health patient who went into crisis and the neighbours rang them to say that this person was going a bit crazy they used to call an ambulance. Now they call a police car. That is the difference. The tenancy manager said that when the ambulance or the mental health advocate turned up at the property the neighbours would say: “What can we do to help?”. When a police officer turns up they say: “How can we get rid of this person from our community?”. That is the current situation we have.I come back to the example of a community housing provider that supports people with mental health issues. It provides wraparound support and I completely agree that it will do a better job than Housing New Zealand does of providing support for tenants with mental health issues. The provider gets that person to a point where they are well enough to take on extra hours at work where they are well enough to start working full-time and then that person no longer qualifies for the income-related rent subsidy. But that provider knows that the minute that wraparound support is not there that person isgoing to go backwards. Well the National Party says: “Evict them. We’ve fixed the problem. It’s OK.” What we know and what the community housing sector knows is that it is not that simple. Just because someone is doing better does not mean it is always going to be the case—that wraparound support needs to be there.The community housing sector has said for a long time it does not want to do the Government’s job for it. It wants to be in partnership with the Government—doing it as well as not instead of the Government. What we see with this legislation is the Government saying “Well you can do our job for us now because we no longer see a serious role for the State in providing social housing.” An effective partnership between the Government and the community housing sector would see a strategic farming out of tenancies basically. We would see tenancies being transferred to organisations that deal with specialist needs in social housing—whether that be dealing with the elderly whether that be dealing with formerly homeless people or at-risk youth or whether that be dealing with mental health patients—as the Government looks for providers that can do that in a way that Housing New Zealand cannot and strategically moves those tenancies over or those properties over instead of what we are seeing here which is holus-bolus just shoving 12000 houses and evicting 3000 people.I do not think the National Government realises that it can evict as many people from Housing New Zealand properties as it wants but they do not just disappear. Those people have to go somewhere. They do not just disappear into the ether because the Hon Dr Nick Smith has evicted them from a Housing New Zealand property. Fix the problem of housing supply and all these non-problems that we are trying to fix in this bill go away. This is a cruel and callous piece of legislation but it is legislation we would expect from this Government.