First Reading: Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust Bill

E tū ana ahau, mema Pāremata o Te Tai Tonga, ki te tautoko i te pire nei. Me te mihi tonu ki a Megan, nāna tēnei pire i hāpai ki te Whare.

[I stand as the member of Parliament for Te Tai Tonga, to support this bill and to acknowledge Megan, who has brought this bill to the House].

The Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust is the largest provider of community and affordable housing into Te Wai Pounamu. That’s not a title, that’s a track record of houses built and whānau housed. Today, this House, our Whare here, faces the simple question of will we back them or not?

And yeah, it sounds like we absolutely will.

We were fortunate enough to spend some time down there last year with general manager Rob Hardie. He took us through all of their operations and it is truly quite a significant and well-run organisation. So, to Matua Rob and the team, tēnā koe.

At the 2023 census, over 100,000 people were living in severe house deprivation. That trend is moving in the wrong direction, unfortunately, with negative impacts compounding year after year. Affordability has slipped beyond the reach of thousands of people, and when incomes cannot keep pace with rents, the inevitable burden and shortfall lands with community providers like the Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

For three decades, we’ve not built enough homes in the right places at achievable price points. Regional supply gaps have accumulated, particularly where population growth has been the strongest. Expanding the trust is how Ōtautahi closes that gap faster, and it also provides opportunity for the rest of Te Wai Pounamu.

The bill removes the outdated geographic handbrake that has confined the trust to Ōtautahi and Banks Peninsula alone—and to all of our whānau who were affected by the floods recently in those locations: e mihi ana, e mihi ana [I acknowledge you].

Housing need does not stop at a boundary line on a map, and neither should good, proven solutions. We know Māori are overrepresented in housing hardship. Many of our people live on the edges of Ōtautahi and Banks Peninsula, in areas where growth is outpacing supply. It reflects where whānau experiencing housing hardship actually are.

This proposal did not appear overnight. It grew from the Greater Christchurch Partnership, including mana whenua, because durable solutions are built with communities in mind, not imposed on them. Smaller regions often lack the workforce, the capital, the organisational structure, and the scale to deliver housing at pace. The trust has this capability in droves, and if we delay the expansion, we create bottlenecks, we slow construction, and we leave whānau waiting. This bill enables partnership with iwi and hapū in new regions, and that will enable many opportunities for many iwi around Te Wai Pounamu who have set out on papa kāinga development, much like Ngāti Huia who only next week will open their latest papa kāinga development.

So we completely support the bill. The bill enables partnership with iwi and hapū. As I’ve said, it enables housing to be shaped by kaupapa Māori and centred on whānau wellbeing, not just on balance sheet. This is how a true intergenerational stability is created.

The Greater Christchurch Partnership Joint Housing Action Plan identified expansion of the trust as a priority. This bill turns that strategy into action. It operationalises a regionally backed, iwi-inclusive solution. That’s what smart Government should do and should look like. Community-based providers have proven they can build, manage, and sustain housing and housing development, so let’s back them and make sure that the Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust gets the resources that it needs.

It is true to say that the answers are already in the communities. So all we need to do, e te Whare, is back them, fund them, trust them, get out of their way, and watch them deliver.

Nō reira, ki ngā whānau ki roto o Ōtautahi: tēnā koutou. Kei te Pika, tēnā koe. Huri noa, tēnā tatou.