Working together to provide shelter

Visiting Visionary Homebuilders (VHB), a social residential development company in Stockton, California for my Massey MBA overseas tour got me interested in how social housing is managed in New Zealand.

An interview with Palmerston North City Councillor Tangi Utikere revealed social housing problems: pressure to meet growing demand; division within council about involvement in social housing, private providers’ unwillingness to pay council rates, continuing population growth and change in demographic structure suggesting that balance between supply and demand is not going to happen.

I remembered how Carol J. Ornelas, (VHB CEO), renowned for her strength in establishing partnerships with her community and collaborating with local city and state officials as well as other agencies worked to provide decent affordable housing to arrest the housing problem created by foreclosures resulting from effects of GFC through collaboration with local council, financiers and Federal Government.

The bankrupt Stockton Council on 25 July 2012 voted to loan more than $1.6 million to VHB to rehabilitate 20 decaying apartments. In 2011 VHB with Alliance for Stabilizing our Communities and Bank of America hosted a Home Rescue Fair assisting with counseling services, foreclosure prevention workshops etc. VHB also worked in collaboration with Stockton Council and California Housing Finance Agency providing 76 housing units for farmworker families.

The power of collaboration

New Zealand has some great social housing organisations working to provide accommodation for the needy and these include Housing New Zealand (HNZ) Agency and an estimated 160 non-governmental small to medium and a handful of large other providers.

The 6 Star House, a project set up to design and build cost-effective, sustainable eco houses is a one off collaborative partnership between UCOL, Palmerston North City Council and United Way, a not-for-profit Organisation that encourages generosity by brokering money, time and skills between individuals, businesses and community. Lutheran Church runs The Lutheran Village for senior citizens while The Salvation Army, Manawatu Tenants Union and the Housing Advice Centre are social housing support groups.

Wouldn’t a formal forum for collaboration for these organisations be great?

Collaboration in social housing is happening in other regions with success of initiatives being based on leveraged solutions that approach a problem from different angles. Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust in collaboration with local District Council and other stakeholders put homeowners into affordable homes through various programmes set up to leverage government funds - including a shared ownership model and deeds have been secured for 260 affordable homes delivered over the next 15 years. Community Housing Aotearoa Inc, Auckland collaborates and coordinates Maori social housing sector in Auckland.

Collaboration for Palmerston North’s social housing providers?

Collaboration here refers to social housing stakeholders coming together to share information in order to identify and address common problems by pooling respective expertise, experiences and intellectual effort. I propose an online business forum similar to businessadviceforum.com online community offering information and advice, fostering unity of purpose, trust amongst members thus growing the organisation as well as encouraging and facilitating private/public collaboration like in The 6 Star project or Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust. Membership would be voluntary and non-members would read posts but have no rights for participation. Limited access for non-members allow them to see the good value without getting any direct help thus encouraging them to join.

Representatives of interested organisations facilitate and manage the forum, ensure relevance of information, direct member organisations to relevant resources and be an advisory group while creating interest for private business to participate.

Providers need to cooperate for initiative to be effective. Organisations do have private informal collaborations only when they need to because these do not call for long term commitment or responsibility to an organisation. Organisations opposed to social housing groups paying council fees would not want to collaborate with council. HNZ may abstain not seeing any benefit in collaborating with small organisations.

Well managed collaborative efforts between social housing providers and supporters could be used to effectively alleviate housing pressure.

Mabel Msopero is a high school teacher studying for a MBA with Massey University.

© Scoop Media