Category: Kainga Ora

Patrick Dougherty, General Manager Construction & Innovation says “Over the last 12 months Kāinga Ora teams have worked hard to deliver new social housing throughout New Zealand. We’ve completed 4,864 new Kāinga Ora state homes – that’s an average of thirteen new homes being delivered every day, or 93 homes a week.”

“We build our homes to last at least 50 years and meet the needs of Kiwis now, as well as future generations. We achieve this by often exceeding current building codes and regulations to keep maintenance costs manageable in future years.

“We work with hundreds of architects, engineers, developers and construction companies all over Aotearoa to achieve this.”

The new homes vary in size and style, ranging from one-bedroom apartments to multi-bedroom freestanding homes. Three quarters of the new homes are standalone or semi-detached, with the remaining quarter apartment-style living in buildings three levels or higher.

“We build homes to cater for a wide range of needs. Just over two thirds of the new houses are one- or two-bedroom homes for individuals or small families, while over 1,700 homes have three or more bedrooms suitable for larger whānau,” says Mr Dougherty.

Kāinga Ora delivers new homes by removing old homes and redeveloping the land we own and buying completed homes from private developers. It also purchases or leases existing homes in areas where there is a need. Through removing, redeveloping and buying completed homes the national net increase in Kāinga Ora social and supported homes to the 12 months ending June 2024 is 3,605.

Page updated: 24 July 2024

Print

Regional Director – Northland, Jeff Murray says the Kensington homes were built on land already owned by Kāinga Ora.

“Across these existing sites on King Street and Churchill Street, in Kensington, we were able to replace four, aging homes that were past their best, with 22 new, modern homes for whanau in need.

“With construction complete, our dedicated placements team have been carefully matching suitable whānau from the Ministry of Social Development’s Housing Register to the new homes,” says Mr Murray.

MSD’s Housing Register currently has 642 applicants for the Whangārei area.

“The majority of the new homes are now tenanted with whānau grateful to have a safe, stable, healthy place to call home,” says Mr Murray.

Jason Williamson, Construction Manager, Northland, at Precision Construction says their Northland-based team worked hard to deliver the new homes at pace.

“We are really proud of these homes that are the result of significant efforts by Precision Construction’s Whangārei-based team, local tradies and subcontractors on the ground.

“A truly collaborative partnership with Kāinga Ora and the Whangārei District Council allowed us to use innovative construction methods, resulting in faster onsite construction and high-quality homes that are structurally stronger, better insulated, weathertight and sustainable,” says Mr Williamson.

Prior to whānau moving in, around 300 community members took the opportunity to walk through the homes, at a series of community open days hosted by Kāinga Ora earlier this month.

Page updated: 19 July 2024

Print

After attending local primary and secondary schools, Braedyn landed an apprenticeship just an eight-minute walk from home and enjoys his sense of independence.

“I love being able to walk to work. I don’t need to drive or depend on public transport,” he says.

Braedyn joined local company Woods Glass as an apprentice machinist straight from high school. He’d been studying carpentry for five years and was keen to get into a technology trade. Through his school’s work experience programme, he started spending one day a week at Woods Glass and was delighted to secure a full-time position towards the end of Year 12.

“I was quite shocked because I didn’t really expect it, it was more than I had dreamed of. It seemed to happen very quickly and suddenly I could be independent.

“It was a great feeling to make my family proud. As soon as I told my mum, the waterworks started,” he laughs.

Braedyn admits he also found the transition from school to the workplace nerve-wracking.

“Going into a workplace for the first time was a bit scary because there are people you don’t know and here there is a lot of machinery. I was pretty nervous for my first few months.

“Now I’ve been here two years, I’d tell any high schooler not to be put off by nerves. It gets easier every day; you just have to give it a go and take the opportunity to learn. I’m not nervous anymore, in fact, my workmates are like one big family. I have my home family and my work family.

“We work in teams with everyone helping each other out. My supervisor Sammy is a great guy, he’s become my mentor. At break times, we chat about anything and everything. He’s actually my favourite part of the job”.

Sammy says he’s impressed with Braedyn’s progress since joining the company two years ago. “He is always willing to help out and he can quickly sense what needs to be done. I can see Braedyn becoming a supervisor then going further in his career.”

Sammy says he and Braedyn enjoy a special friendship. “We talk about our families and what we’ve been up to. We help each other with problems.”

Company manager Steven agrees. “Braedyn’s work ethic won him a company values award. Every four months, we hold a “Town Hall”, a celebration to acknowledge great work and Braedyn received an award for commitment. When his supervisor was away on holiday, Braedyn stepped up to manage the CNC (Automated aluminium milling) machine which was far beyond what we could have expected of him at that stage. We were so impressed.”

Supporting his whānau is important to Braedyn. He spends a lot of his time either at home with his mother and sisters or visiting his grandparents.

“It wasn’t easy for my mum to bring up us kids on her own so it’s nice to be able to help out now that I’m working.”

“I’ve had a lot of support from Kāinga Ora and my school and my employers, so it feels good to be able to give back.” 

Page updated: 18 July 2024

Print

Our frontline teams are making earlier and more frequent use of the tools available under the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA).

In the past three months, there has been a six-fold increase in warning notices issued compared to the same period last year, and twice the number of forced relocations have occurred to resolve tenancy issues.

There have also been significantly more applications for tenancy terminations. In the past three months we have ended 14 tenancies for either disruptive behaviour or rental debt.

Alongside this, we are now introducing a new Tenancy Management Framework that will strike a better balance between our responsibilities as a landlord, the responsibilities of tenants, and the quiet enjoyment of others in the community. This will inform our approach to a range of tenancy issues, including rental arrears, disruptive behaviour and the management of pets. Our approach is about being firm but fair.

To drive further progress, we are rolling out a new Disruptive Behaviour policy to formalise our new approach and guide how our frontline teams respond to disruptive behaviour.

We will still work to understand what’s driving behaviour and refer tenants to specialist social and health services to address underlying issues. We will continue to use notices and relocation to prompt behaviour change.

However, we are also introducing an escalated approach in two situations: where a tenant’s behaviour creates a significant safety issue; or where behaviour is disruptive and persistent, and a household ignores our warnings. In these situations, we will apply to the Tenancy Tribunal to terminate the tenancy – and we will not provide the tenant with another home.

Ultimately, this new approach is designed to provide a clear deterrent for disruptive behaviour and spark behaviour change.

Since 1 July we have been rolling out guidance and training to our frontline teams to support them to act quickly when responding to disruptive behaviour. We are also working to ensure our tenants are aware of the changes and what they mean for how we manage tenancies.

These changes are focused on addressing serious disruptive behaviour. Many of the issues people get in touch with us about are minor things that are common issues between neighbours throughout the country, like noisy cars, lawns not being mowed regularly or how often visitors are calling at a home. We will continue to address these types of concerns through our existing processes.

It is important to stress the approach that we are taking will not have any impact on the majority of Kāinga Ora tenants who already do the right thing, are responsible tenants, and treat their neighbours with respect.

We will regularly publish performance data around how we are responding to disruptive behaviour on our website – this will begin in late-July.

Attributed to Nick Maling, General Manager of National Services

Page updated: 14 July 2024

Print