Dean Jacqui: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Dean Jacqui: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:18472] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 I am very pleased to rise to speak on Part 1 of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill. I start my contribution this evening by saying I am a little puzzled at Madam Chair’s directing my colleague John Carter—I believe—not to move beyond the scope of Part 1 into providing solutions. I think I have correctly picked up her direction. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: This debate is consideration in Committee. That can be done in the second or the third reading but not in this debate. 
JACQUI DEAN 
: Thank you Madam Chair. I understood and I thought and I do believe that this bill is about providing solutions to affordable housing and it is in that context that I make my comments. 
I want to make my contribution very local and to put the Committee in the hands of a small local authority such as the Waimate District Council the Mackenzie District Council the Waitaki District Council the Timaru District Council or the Ashburton District Council all councils in my region that may or may not—because this is an enabling bill—decide to take a housing needs assessment on behalf of their community. How will that housing needs assessment be generated? It might be generated from a member of the community or a group within the community that feels very strongly about this matter—and there are members of the community who feel very strongly that there is a need to provide community housing within a certain town or district. 
That is fine. A letter is written to the mayor and councillors requesting that a housing needs assessment take place. What does that mean for the Waimate District Council which has got say one engineer one community services officer and one other officer? There will be a rating officer. Who is going to undertake this work? We can argue—probably quite rightly—that because every council in New Zealand is required to undertake a long-term community council plan then a housing needs assessment can be undertaken alongside with or attached to an annual plan or a long-term community council plan. That is a case that can be argued. But when a council has one engineer one community services officer and one rating officer who also have to deal with the day-to-day business of the Mackenzie District Council or the Waimate District Council and who also have to deal with accreditation under the Building Act which is still exercising many small local authorities not just in my corner of the world but throughout New Zealand who will undertake that study? Who in a small rural local authority has the expertise to undertake a housing needs assessment? 
If we turn to the provisions contained within Part 1 we see that under clause 8 “Method of assessment” subclause (3)(d) provides for a method that gives “a description of the current balance between supply and demand in the housing market generally and if relevant in different sectors:” If say the Waimate District Council is going to do that does it do it just for the Waimate township or does it also do it for the little villages that are spread around the Waimate District? Where does it end? 
I think Part 1’s requirements of small local authorities of which there are many around New Zealand will impose an added amount of work which they may be willing to undertake—this is an enabling bill and if the community wants a council to do an assessment then the council may well be willing to do it—but there is the question of their capability to do it. If they have to bring in consultants to undertake the work who will pay the consultants? The concern I have is not about the willingness of a local authority to do a housing needs assessment; it is about the capability of a local authority to undertake an assessment and the cost that it will impose on the whole of the community. 
Madam Chair I am concerned at your direction to my colleague not to stray into the realm of finding solutions when debating Part 1 because I think Part 1 is very much about the mechanism of finding solutions. I am very concerned that we have two directions here. On the one hand we are not to try to find solutions yet we are debating Part 1 which provides the mechanism for finding solutions through a housing needs assessment. 
I am concerned that a new industry of housing needs assessors will build up in New Zealand. I am concerned that there will be a number of consultancy firms—they are probably writing their job descriptions even now and scoping out the type of work they will be doing. These housing needs assessors—I am sure they will find much flasher descriptions of their jobs than that—will offer themselves to local government to undertake housing needs assessments. 
The concern I have on behalf of the Waimate District Council and the MacKenzie District Council is that although the aim of this bill is to provide affordable housing to people the method does not actually follow through on it. This bill does not in any way achieve what it sets out to achieve. What it does is provide an opportunity for housing needs assessors to find a whole new vehicle for earning some jolly good fees from the ratepayer base of small local authorities.