A First Look at Wellington’s Affordable Rentals
Pets, Wifi and Lights: A First Look at Wellington’s Affordable Rentals
One year away from expected moving in date, the social enterprise arm of The Wellington Company and the Wellington City Council have unveiled a first look at what prospective tenants such as key workers such as nurses, teachers, police and other public sector workers could expect their affordable apartments to look like.
In September, The Wellington City council
announced it was teaming up with the social enterprise arm
of The Wellington Company to convert an inner-city building
-named Te Kainga Aroha by mana whenua - into affordable
apartments, as one of the ways to tackle the city’s
accommodation crisis.
‘Too often the solution for
housing - and especially rentals - rests only on things like
price and quantity. Our starting point was to look at what
it means for Te Kainga Aroha to feel like an actual home,’
says Alex Cassels, who is leading the Te Kainga social
enterprise project for The Wellington Company, alongside his
father Ian Cassels.
‘There are countless examples
around the world to show that communities are better off
when people feel a sense of rootedness to where they live.
To get to that point, people need security of tenure,
certainty and control around costs, a degree of agency and
ability to have the things around them that make a house
feel like a home. With Te Kainga Aroha, we have made a
commitment to delivering those outcomes, alongside
affordable rents.’
The pilot partnership is
understood to be the first model of its kind in the country,
with a few more in the pipeline, and will see the council
take on a 15-year head lease for a building that can house
up to 100 people in one, two and three bedroom apartments.
Cassels says a further three buildings in the inner-city
have been identified and ringfenced by The Wellington
Company for affordable housing.
‘Essentially we’ve
got enough room across four buildings to house 500 people
who earn too much to make the cut for social housing but
don’t earn enough that they can comfortably continue to
pay market rents, which will just keep rising. We are
totally committed to getting this right. We are looking to
the council to take the lead on what the criteria is for
affordability, and seeing how we can help to enable
that.’
Cassels says that in practice, a lease on a
home is tantamount to ownership: ‘This is a good thing.
The law makes it very hard for anyone to kick you out, even
if your landlords change hands. But the real kicker is that
it’s too easy for some landlords to do things like insist
on yearly contracts and arbitrary rent increases, so you
never really feel like a rental is your true
home.’
Cassels says the dignity of the renter is an
important consideration. The Te Kainga apartments will
have:
* The apartments will look and feel like a
home, meaning ample sunlight and space
* The 15-year
lease enables Council to pass on security of tenure through
long-lease agreements with tenants
* Protective lease
to give the tenant pretty much every right of ownership, so
that they don’t have to face the prospect that a new owner
may kick them out
* Rental increase pegged to CPI
rather than market rate, so it will become more affordable
over time, and the Council can pass that onto the end
tenant
* Free WiFi
* Free garbage disposal
* LED lights to reduce light bill
* Hot water
system that reduces bills by 50%
* Pets allowed
* Minor amends allowed
* Brand new whiteware
*
Earthquake strengthened to 80 percent of the new building
standard.
Cassels says that time is of the essence,
and waiting too long will make people look outside of
Wellington.
‘The urgency of the issue and the
limited space in this city means we can’t afford to take
four years to build from scratch. A conversion from
commercial to residential can take around a year, which
means we are cutting down the time by up to
75%.’
Wellington Mayor Justin Lester says the
initiative is one of a number of ways that the Council is
addressing housing needs across the spectrum.
‘The
affordable slice of the market has different needs to others
such as the student sector or the social housing sector.
These rentals are for the Key Worker demographic, which
includes teachers, nurses, police and other public sector
workers. Because the rent is pegged to CPI, what we
anticipate is that over time, these rentals become more and
more affordable.’
‘We want to work with a range of
operators who can come up with solutions to address issues
around housing in the city, so we can play to our strengths
and those with key assets can play to theirs.’
The
council already housed about 3400 tenants in its portfolio
of 2090 social housing properties, making it the
second-biggest landlord in the country.
Wellington
City Councillor and Housing Portfolio Leader Brian Dawson
says Wellington has historically high numbers of people
renting, so it is important that the needs of the renter
remains a priority area.
‘It’s the rental market
that we have the best chance of positively addressing
affordability in in the next three years. I don’t want the
inner city to become home only for those in the higher
income bracket. These initiatives help ensure that doesn’t
happen.’
Ends