Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Paul Gilberd: Community Housing Aotearoa Chief Executive on 57% less families living in emergency housing

Transcript

Paul Gilberd: Community Housing Aotearoa Chief Executive on 57% less families living in emergency housing · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The number of families living in emergency housing has cut
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: has been reduced by get this, fifty seven percent, nearly
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: sixty percent. This is according to new numbers from MSD
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and Housing in the Urban Development Agency. In December last year,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: there were just over three thousand families in motels, now
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: just thirteen hundred. Phil Gilbert is with us. He's the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Community Housing ALTI at our chief executive Phil. Good morning,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Oh hi, Paul.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Hi, right now, All good, it's early in the morning. Brother.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: They gave me, Paul, tell me, do you buy these numbers?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I mean it seems incredible.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Oh look, it's a big turnaround and in a short
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  Speaker 2: space of time, and yeah, we believe they are accurate.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: If you are looking at children, getting children out of motels,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: we think that's a fantastical idea, hugely supportive of it,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and it seems to be tracking in the right direction.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Fantastic. Do you know where the twenty percent of people
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: that leave and we don't know where they're going? Do
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: you know where they're going?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Oh? Look, we've got a pretty good idea. We've got
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: in the community sector, got about twenty thousand houses across
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the country, so about thirty five thousand New Zealanders go
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: to bed every night in one of our houses, so
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: we're picking up quite a few of them. But there's
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: a lot more people been lost in the system who
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: don't sell out a census data and who we're not
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: picking up. So you can't take this measure as the
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: only measure of homelessness to get an accurate picture of
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: what's actually playing out in society at the moment.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: The government has a target of fifteen hundred new social homes.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: This is by twenty twenty seven, which will be delivered
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: by community housing providers, presumably like the ones that you
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: work with.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Yep.
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  Speaker 1: Is that doable?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, that's absolutely right. That is our target. The
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: government's backing our sector and it's our job to deliver those. Yeah,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: it is achievable. Look, we're with non solutions at the
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: moment to find the billion dollars that's one thousand million
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: dollars we're going to need to find pay for those
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: houses and tracking very well. We've done those sorts of
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: numbers historically over the last few years before, and so
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: we're pretty confident we can deliver on those. Yes, we can.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Paul, what's changed. It feels like just a couple of
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: years ago, even a year ago, this was an entrenched problem.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: We had thousands of families stuck in these motiles and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: no real prospect of them getting out, and now all
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, it's like evaporating into thin air.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Look, I think we have a tendency sometimes
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: to oversimplify, but I think in general, communities, society, community providers,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: the government kind of or has been tremendously helpful with
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: helping fix this problem. Most of the families who've been
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: permanently housed have been housed by them, and your members
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: need to your listeners, sorry, need to remember. KO has
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: been building one in five houses in the whole country
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: for the last few years, so they've been really cracking
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: into getting new supply going. I think we've all decided
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: that we don't think growing up in motels is a
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: good place for kids, and when we focus on a
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: goal like that in New Zealand, we can fix this stuff. Actually,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: we're a pretty small country and this is a man
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: made problem in the housing crisis. We can actually undo
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: it if we want to.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Paul, thank you very much for your time and your analysis.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Paul Gilbert, the Community Housing Altie our chief executive for
• 3:16
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• 3:20
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