Williams Poto: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9122. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Apologies to my colleague Stuart Nash. I just want to continue on the theme that I started before and that is on the actual objectives of the social housing reform. I got up to in my last call talking about the population of people who have the greatest need as I understand it who are single men.As far as I am aware—and my colleagues can assist me if they are aware—there appear to be no building programmes in place by the Government to address this need for particularly single men who have some issues. They come with some particular concerns generally around mental wellness and often with addictions as an added issue to deal with. They are a population of serious need and I have yet to see the Government’s Social Housing Reform Programme adequately address that group of people.The next part of new section 50D inserted by clause 8 that I want to refer to is subsection (1)(c) “social housing tenants are helped to independence as appropriate:”. That is an aspirational statement if ever there was one. “As appropriate” is also interesting—that we would not want all of our social housing tenants to have a level of independence. But what does that actually mean on the ground? Often it means actually exiting social housing and going into private rentals. Although on the face of it that sounds like an OK proposition for people to get into private rentals we know that there are some real problems with private rentals.There are real problems with the stock for example. Private landlords are not required to have their stock meet any kind of standard of fitness whether that is around insulation whether that is around weathertightness. So we can be potentially putting vulnerable people who require social housing into the hands of some unscrupulous landlords. Not all of them are like that but when there is no requirement for them to have their homes at any kind of standard by and large people will go to the lowest common denominator and will not provide housing of a good quality standard if it is not required of them.The next social housing reform objective is that “there is more diverse ownership or provision of social housing:”. We know that what is going to happen will be slightly more diverse but not in a way that will actually meet any good social outcomes for people requiring social housing because as I have said before in speaking on this part it is likely that public-private partnerships will be involved or that there will be organisations for whom the profit motive is the most prime objective. Profit does not necessarily mean good social outcomes. In fact it invariably does not. It means that the objective is to make profits not actually to meet good social outcomes.So the next objective is that “there is more innovation and more responsiveness to social housing tenants and communities:”. As I have already said there is obviously one population that is so far missing from this. More innovation and more responsiveness by having less housing stock in State control—those two things do not make sense to me. When people want to access housing we know—as many electorate MPs and other MPs know who are daily being asked for assistance to support people into housing—that there definitely at this point in time is not more responsiveness to social housing. And how will selling off the stock actually force more responsiveness and innovation into the market? I cannot see this. I would like the Minister to perhaps take a call and respond to that.The last item of this particular group of objectives is that “the supply of affordable housing”—