Chris Bishop: Housing Minister on the success of the Priority One housing policy

The Government's work to tackle emergency housing appears to be paying off.

Only about 500 families remain in emergency housing after one year of the Government's Priority One policy. 

It bumps families to the top of the social housing waiting list if they have dependent children and have spent more than 12 weeks in emergency housing.  

Almost a thousand families with more than two thousand children have been moved from emergency housing motel rooms into homes, since the policy took effect 

Housing Minister Chris Bishop told Mike Hosking they're well on the way to solving the problem.    

He says under Labour's government, there were more than four-thousand families living in motels permanently. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Morgan news as the government appears to be able to
make major in roads into emergency housing, so this was
a priority one policy for them. Of course, nearly one
thousand families, that's more than twenty one hundred kids out
of emergency housing. We only have five hundred nineteen children
left in emergency housing now compared with more than thirty
three hundred in April of last year. The Housing Minister
Chris Bishop's back with this very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
So just for numbers, thirty seven percent into social housing,
twenty nine transitional, nineteen for private fourteen didn't need any
help at all. What's the magic that the previous government
had thousands queuing up and it was a disaster in
motels and places like Roharua. A year and a half on,
we're well on our way to solving it.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, I mean it's great news. We're really proud of that.
There's a few things going on. I mean the first
is that we adopted a policy very quickly upon coming
to government which said if you're on the social housing
weightlist and you've been in emergency housing for twelve weeks
or longer and you've got kids, you go straight to
the top of the weitlist, which means that Coying or
AURA and the community housing sector can take you out
of that motel and you get the first preference essentially

(01:02):
to get into a social house. That's made an enormous difference.
And we just took a simple view that if you've
been in a stuck an emergency housing in a motel,
these grotty little motel rooms around the country, and you've
got to remember three years ago, unto labor, at one
point we had over four thousand families living permanently basically
in these motels. We just took the view that you
were absolutely priority number one. No one wants children growing

(01:24):
up in these motel rooms. I mean I've visited some
of them in my lecturate and other MPs that have
done the same thing. I mean you sometimes had, you know,
a mum and three kids, two kids living in a
one bedroom studio. You know, no, no, no, no place
to bring up a child. You know every ie missed
and would agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
So take that view, and why couldn't I mean, I
don't want to turn this into a political thing, but
why it's just a view you're talking you did something
about it? Why couldn't Labor see the same thing and
do something about it.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Then, well, I do find it baffling, to be honest,
because you know, I just take the simple view that
no one wants kids growing up in motel rooms, and
you've got to do whatever it takes and spin whatever
it takes to do that. So we adopted policy. We've
also made emergency housing we've reset it back to how
it originally started. You've got to remember when Paula Bennet
introduced it all those years ago, back in twenty sixteen.
It was meant to be a last resort, you know,

(02:10):
three or four days to tide someone over or family
over while they got there back on their feet and
got some support around them. Under Labor, unfortunately, and again
it's been too political about it, so they just handed
out these emergency housing vouchers like confetti, and it became
extremely easy. It became a permanent, institutionalized part of the
MSD social support system, which it was never intended to do.

(02:31):
So we've reset that as well. So we've made it
easier to get out of emergency housing, and we've made
sure emergency housing itself goes back to what it was
originally intended for good.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
So are you at the crunchy end of this now?
Have you got the low hanging fruit so to speak,
and it gets difficult or is this going to be
a solved problem.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
That's what the officials tell us is that none of
these cases are easy, but in terms of people who
are clearly in need, who we can move into a house,
and we're also wrapping a bit of support around them,
because it's all we want to move into a house,
but you need help with you know, how to pay
the rent, to look after the place. So we're wrapping
support around people as well. There's about five hundred families
left in an emergency around the country. The rot story

(03:12):
is already success through by the way, we're closing the
motels that they've been using a rote aura as well.
So it's about five hundred families left. We've got some
increased intervention support available for them. Some of those people,
when those families are have pretty challenging backgrounds and pretty
challenging circumstances, but we're doing what we can and what
it takes to try and get them out as well.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Okay, fifteen seconds for all the Texters. They're all in
their cars and they're all on the streets and this
is a scam.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
It's completely incorrect. That's the facts show that these people
are moving into social houses, transitional housing and private rentals
as well. That's what the facts show. And I'm really
proud of our record.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Good only appreciate it. Chris Bishop, the Housing Minister. I
got to get them back because I've been fascinated with
the christ Church thing, so intensification. Christ battle with them
for the last several years. They lost that battle. They
had a plan. Bushop looked at it said you're not
doing it. So at some point I want to talk
to them about that. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news Talks a'd Be from six am weekdays,

(04:14):
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