Williams Poto: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19169. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Kia orana. This morning I spoke with my electorate office. That is not unusual you would argue and no it is not but I spoke to my electorate office this morning about what is happening in housing and particularly about what is happening with emergency accommodation in Christchurch. I do that from time to time. The team down there lets me know what is going on. We keep records of people who come into the electorate office looking for assistance with housing particularly emergency accommodation providers. Today my team told me—and I am just going to quote from the email they sent through to me today—that currently there are no emergency housing units available in Christchurch. Further it went on to say that the Salvation Army is full and has waiting lists but cannot move people on to permanent housing.We all know that there is an issue with housing in the Canterbury region including affordability and affordability of rents. Our rents have moved over $100 a week in the last year. We matched that to census figures that came out from One News a few days ago that said there have been 700 more people living in temporary dwellings and overcrowded houses since the quakes. The census data also goes on to tell us there are 2200 people in Christchurch living in temporary accommodation up 50 percent from 2006 and 700 people living in mobile homes and makeshift shelters. Overcrowding has climbed with more than 25000 people living in crowded households.We in Labour say that there is a better way—that the answer actually lies in building more homes. To be fair the Minister of Housing has done some work in this regard. The Christchurch housing accord with the Christchurch City Council will bring some affordable rentals back into the market. But when I questioned the Minister—Hon Ruth Dyson: About time.POTO WILLIAMS: That is right; it is way past time actually Ruth Dyson. When I questioned the Minister at the select committee estimates discussion he could not tell me how many more affordable rentals the accord would bring and nor could he tell me when they were likely to start construction. This Minister has really proved to be slow in many areas. His own figures show that of the 700 new Housing New Zealand Corporation homes he promised to build a year ago he has built only 29.From the Ministry of Social Development we know that of course the number of people who are on priority waiting lists for Housing New Zealand Corporation homes at the last count was over 500. But of course we do not know what the new figures are because the Minister for Social Development has not been able to provide us with any figures since they moved the accessibility criteria to the Ministry of Social Development in mid-April.The Minister of Housing likes to quote consents as a measure of progress and I would just like to share some information about that as well. I have to say to be fair that Christchurch is currently experiencing the highest number of consents ever. Well what a surprise that would be!Iain Lees-Galloway: Why?POTO WILLIAMS: I wonder why! I think they are supposed to be building houses are they not? The average number of consents for the period the National Government has been in office though is 1647. Let us compare that with the historic average of 1926—this is annually—and compare it with the average of 2012 over the years 1999 to 2008. This obviously goes to show that we were starting from some deficit even before the quakes hit. That is significant because we are starting from way back past left field before we even consider how much we need to do to get us to pre-quake levels.The Minister says that the Canterbury region has to put up with housing unaffordability for at least another 5 years. So for 8½ years people in Canterbury will see their accommodation costs eat up more and more and more of their income. There is a better way.