More homes

Vennell St
In January Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown and Dwell staff, board, supporters and partners celebrated the completion of our four new three bedroom homes at Vennell Street, Brooklyn.

The homes were built by Primesite Homes Ltd on land sold to us by Wellington City Council, and the project was jointly funded by the government and Dwell. Two of the four homes are part of Dwell's new shared home ownership programme for first home buyers. The programme is the first of its kind for Wellington. The other two homes will be affordable rentals and we will be receiving income related rent subsidies for them.

Riverside Gardens
In March we made our final purchase of our new homes in Pomare’s new development Riverside Gardens. In total we now have eight homes there. Four of these are affordable rentals and four are shared home ownership. All families are very happy to be living in these new quality homes.

One of our shared home owners sent us this email:

I am just loving the house – it is incredibly warm, and spacious. It has really started to settle my son down now knowing that he has his “forever” home as he puts it. Am very happy with the house, I feel very blessed that I have been given such an amazing opportunity.

We are thrilled to be able to add our shared home ownership programme to our wide range of affordable housing options. Dwell's services now include supported housing for people experiencing mental illness, group living for single people, general needs social and affordable rental housing, and the shared home ownership programme for first home buyers.

New project
In February we contracted architectural firm Novak Middleton to undertake a feasibility study into the redevelopment of one of our sites. We are very excited to be working on another project that will provide more quality affordable homes that are much needed in Wellington. We are uncertain when we will be able to proceed with this project due to a lack of capital funding being available from the government at present. Last year’s budget had committed $30m in Social Housing Fund grants, with the first $10m to have been available in July 2015. Budget 2015 reprioritised those funds to operational funding within Treasury, this is very disappointing.

Social housing reform programme
The government’s main work now in relation to the growing of the community housing sector is focused on the sale of Housing NZ houses. They are slowly releasing more details and as part of this have announced that the first regions they will work with are Invercargill and Tauranga. It is anticipated that any sales won’t actually happen until around April 2016. We are interested in this work and keeping up with developments and participating in any consultation. We are, though, very cautious about what is being proposed. It’s difficult to see how we can take Housing NZ houses that could be poor quality so needing upgrading and pay for them without any government investment as well. We have no idea if Wellington will be included in this process soon or at all.

Our work in Porirua
Thanks are due to the Working Together More Fund who funded us to work with our colleagues at Advance Pacific Housing Group (APHG). APHG is a group of individuals and organisations formed to address the social and housing needs of Pacific families in Porirua. The group received funding from HNZC some years ago to research the housing needs of Pacific communities in Porirua. Dwell and APHG have been talking for some time about how we can work together to provide more homes and better homes in Eastern Porirua. We have done a lot of work on shared visions and goals. We are now exploring partnership opportunities with other agencies in Porirua to achieve more housing.