Latest / Best of Business / Simon Moutter: Kāinga Ora chair on the plan to turn the state housing agency around

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Simon Moutter: Kāinga Ora chair on the plan to turn the state housing agency around · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from news Talk zed be
• 0:12
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  Speaker 2: In the country's biggest landlord has a turnaround plan kind
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  Speaker 2: of order is going to refocus on simply building and
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  Speaker 2: managing social housing. It plans to sell nine hundred homes
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  Speaker 2: a year that are no longer fit for purpose and
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  Speaker 2: renew older homes that it needs to. Overall, the numbers
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  Speaker 2: won't reduce the payoff. Well, debt will be down one
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  Speaker 2: point eight billion dollars in twenty twenty seven twenty eight
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  Speaker 2: compared to the twenty twenty three forecast. Bord chair Simon
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  Speaker 2: Murder is with me this evening, Simon, good evening. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: ah yeah, right, building and managing social housing. Was that
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  Speaker 2: not an obvious focus for this outfit?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I think so. In just it's you know, an
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  Speaker 3: organization is always going to function better when it's got
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  Speaker 3: a very clear and reasonably narrow purpose in mandate and
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  Speaker 3: things that you know, we ended up over the last
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  Speaker 3: few years having a wide range of mandates and that
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  Speaker 3: that can distract your top team, your attention, your resources,
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  Speaker 3: and so I'm confident that as we narrow the mandate
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  Speaker 3: back down and we focus on the core functions, will
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  Speaker 3: do a much better job.
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  Speaker 2: The number of social houses won't fall, but will it
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  Speaker 2: go up, you know, will it meet the demand of
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  Speaker 2: the wait list.
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  Speaker 3: Between between now and June twenty twenty six, will continue
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  Speaker 3: to grow the total number of social housing and we'll
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  Speaker 3: reach a level of around seventy eight thousand social houses
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  Speaker 3: by June twenty twenty six, and from that point on,
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  Speaker 3: unless the Government instructs us to add further to the
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  Speaker 3: total housing stock, will run the business with one in
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  Speaker 3: and one out approach and that will result in around
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  Speaker 3: in nineteen hundred to two thousand construction events, some of
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  Speaker 3: which are replacing, you know, knocking down old houses and
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  Speaker 3: replacing them with new and others being fully refurbished, so
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  Speaker 3: relifing a home. But that would be the process from there.
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  Speaker 3: And the Government has signaled that it wants to explore
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  Speaker 3: the possibility of future growth in social housing coming from
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  Speaker 3: the community housing provider sector, who are very good at
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  Speaker 3: what they do and provide some very good care services,
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  Speaker 3: and we're very supportive of that. Logic.
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  Speaker 2: It means you'll be building houses. Have you got to
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  Speaker 2: the bottom of why Coming of Order was paying on
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  Speaker 2: average twelve percent more for new builds than the private market.
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  Speaker 3: A number of reasons, actually, and not the least of
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  Speaker 3: which was a very aggressive increase in the requirement to
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  Speaker 3: build houses. And you know, last in twenty twenty four
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  Speaker 3: financial year we built we built nearly six thousand, So
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  Speaker 3: it's those were enormous numbers. And so when you work
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  Speaker 3: at that pace, it does push a lot of inefficiency
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  Speaker 3: into the business. You have to make choices that you
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  Speaker 3: otherwise wouldn't to deliver that sort of a number and.
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  Speaker 2: Should give your economy a lot, shouldn't it give your
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  Speaker 2: economy scale things cheaper.
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  Speaker 3: No, it's just delivered at such speed and you're pulling
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  Speaker 3: on so many resources. The opposite occurs, you become inefficient
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  Speaker 3: with ad to make gore sites, election choices and things.
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  Speaker 3: So partly in efficiency, and then a little bit to
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  Speaker 3: do with the design standards and the specs which had
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  Speaker 3: got probably further than they needed to be in terms
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  Speaker 3: of specificity beyond what would be seen as a normal
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  Speaker 3: market build for an affordable home. And so we're already
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  Speaker 3: resetting some of those specifications just to bring them a
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  Speaker 3: bit closer to a regular builds. Social housing does require
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  Speaker 3: some features that that normal market housing doesn't. But it
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  Speaker 3: doesn't need to cost hundreds of thousands more. Should only cost,
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  Speaker 3: you know, teaching the low teens of thousands more in
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  Speaker 3: a unit.
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  Speaker 2: Simon, thank you very much for your time. Simon Moota
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  Speaker 2: the kind of order board Share for.
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