Williams PotoNew Part 8 Amendment to Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It is a real pleasure to rise and take a call on new Part 8 in this Committee stage debate. Firstly I want to say that this is #changethegovernment in action happening right here. I have to commend Metiria Turei and Phil Twyford for the work that they have been doing through their Supplementary Order Papers and amendments.Part 8 looks at amendments to the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992 and I want to confine my comments to a couple of the provisions in Part 8. The first one I want to discuss is new section 72A inserted by clause 12 which looks at ensuring that there is sufficient funding for the income-related rent subsidy when there is not enough social housing stock to meet the need of people who need emergency housing or social housing. What we have found throughout the homelessness inquiry is that people are forced into really precarious housing situations. It is the role of Housing New Zealand—and it is actually the role of the Government—to ensure that people are housed sufficiently and I know that there will be many people who have a sense of disquiet at the growing numbers of people who are living in very precarious housing situations. They are not just Labour and Green supporters; they are people everywhere who see the growing numbers of homeless in our country and have a real disquiet about that. New section 72A actually looks at how we take care of providing not just emergency housing but sufficient housing to give people the opportunity to have somewhere to live while they get their acts together and while they build their resources to be able to hopefully move on into homeownership. So having the ability to support social housing providers through the income-related rent subsidy when there is insufficient stock of social housing to take care of the need is very important.I am absolutely overwhelmed by how good a job we have been doing with these amendments to actually develop a comprehensive housing plan for this issue. This is being debated in this Chamber today and I would have to say there will be a lot of people who are watching this debate saying: Why doesn't the Government do this?".Hon Ruth Dyson: Or anything—do anything.POTO WILLIAMS: Yeah. I for one would be really happy if the Government would take the opportunity with all of these wonderful ideas that are coming to the Committee today to do something to address the growing levels of need.The other provision that I want to address in the last 2 minutes of this call is new section 98C(2)(d) inserted by clause 13 which says that you should have a plan to provide appropriate responses to the diverse groups needing housing. In this regard I want to pay particular note to a couple of groups that I do not think have been identified as having unmet need. The first one is youth. When I had a job in the real world in a place called Waipuna—which hosted one of the homelessness inquiry sessions—we did a lot of work with young people. Young people do not have credit. They are sometimes a risk to landlords. They find it very difficult to get into housing. They cannot find sufficient money for bonds. This is a group that finds it very difficult to get housing. They often are young parents. What I am really hopeful for is that as part of Part 8 this diverse group will have access to housing.The other group that has significant need that has not been addressed is women and children escaping violence. This is a group that actually has a huge level of unmet need. We do have refuges but they have expressed real concern at not being able to provide an opportunity once the crisis is over for those women and kids to have decent accommodation. We need to be able to be providing safe opportunities for housing for our communities."