Better services

One of our strategic goals is better services. As part of our aim to continually improve what we do and ensure what we do is best practice we have undertaken a number of activities.

Review of our service

As part of our aim to continually improve what we do and ensure what we do is best practice we decided to review our supported housing service. We contracted Alice Peycke to undertake this review with us. We have been talking with our stakeholders and have consulted and read as much as we can.

We are a registered community housing provider

Dwell was deemed a registered community housing provider with the government's new Community Housing Regulatory Authority (CHRA) in 2014. We had until March 2015 to make a full application for registration. We completed all the necessary work for the application and we were pleased to hear that our application was successful in April. We received further feedback on our application from CHRA in June and were thrilled this was very positive about our performance as a community housing organisation.

Being registered means that Dwell is eligible for the income related rent subsidy for new tenancies and also can be part of any other government initiatives – including any sale of Housing NZ assets. To date we are the only Wellington based registered provider.

Studies

Dwell is involved in two studies that are happening in Porirua:

• The Blitz Campaign – Services for Youth in Eastern Porirua. The Porirua Social Sector Trial and He Kainga Oranga (Healthy Housing Programme), Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, have agreed to work together to identify the needs of youth in relation to the delivery of social services in Porirua. The aim of the project is to identify the needs and gaps in social service delivery for youth in Porirua with a view to developing proposals to address the issues arising. Dwell holds the agreement and is contracting He Kainga Oranga.
• Household Crowding and Rheumatic Fever Study. Dwell has been subcontracted by He Kainga Oranga to undertake 35 interviews of Pacific families who have a family member with rheumatic fever, to better understand the causes of it and possible interventions – like improved housing conditions.

Both these partnerships were facilitated through the work we are doing with Advance Pacific Housing Group.

In the media

It’s impossible to miss the comments and coverage of New Zealand’s housing issues as they are constantly in the media. There have been some that have included Dwell and some comments by Dwell. Look at other pages on our website for articles that have included Dwell.