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:9115. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I want to speak to clause 8 particularly in that it introduces new Part 5A which is about the Social Housing Reform Programme. I want to refer to the regulatory impact statement where it actually sets out the Social Housing Reform Programme. I just want to quote from it and make some comments about this because it is very relevant that the Government has set itself some standards by which it wants this bill measured and by which the work measured against it. I want to make some comments on that.The Social Housing Reform Programme “intends to improve the lives of vulnerable New Zealanders by getting them into housing which meets their needs for the duration of that need.” That is an interesting statement except for the fact that we have reviewable tenancies. The Government will then determine that tenants may not need a particular house and will put them into the private tenancy market. “In December 2014 Cabinet agreed a set of objectives for the [Social Housing Reform Programme]”. The first one is to “ensure that people who need housing support can access it and receive social services that meet their needs”. That is a great objective.In Christchurch East you could say that we are “frequent flyers” of accessing housing for our constituency. We have a great relationship with our Housing New Zealand partners so much so that we are in daily contact with the Housing New Zealand Corporation. We have a real understanding of what our community needs and the partnership that we have out into the community for those providers including Housing New Zealand.One of the things that we have found most troubling was when the assessment function for social housing moved from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry of Social Development. We understood the logic that sat behind that because you are talking about a similar cohort of people accessing both the provision of services from the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand. We could understand that. However in the intervening year or so or year and a half—nearly 2 years—since that transfer of assessment function has occurred I cannot see a demonstrated improvement in accessibility of housing for vulnerable people. I do not believe it has achieved what it was supposed to have achieved.In terms of the first Cabinet objective around accessing housing support that meets people’s needs I think there has been a failure already and we have not even gone through the process of selling off the houses to private providers. The second objective as discussed in these Cabinet objectives is to “ensure that social housing is of the right size and configuration and is in the right areas for those households which need it”. I have yet to see the Government actually build the houses that are needed for the population of most need. It is well known that the types of houses that we need are single bedroom two bedroom and four bedroom or more. Those are the configurations that are needed for our social housing tenants.Although there are lots of two-bedroom homes being built particularly in Christchurch in response to the extra need that is there we have yet to do anything about the most needy of our housing tenants who are single men. Generally speaking they are men who are difficult to house because they come with their own sets of issues usually mental health concerns and drug and alcohol dependencies. I have not seen that population group have their needs met and it is not likely to happen under a private arrangement.