The number of families living in emergency housing has reduced by 57%, according to new figures from the Ministry of Social Development and Housing and Urban Development.
Community Housing Aotearoa Chief Executive Paul Gilberd tells Ryan Bridge getting children out of motels is fantastic.
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The number of families living in emergency housing has cut has been reduced by get this, fifty seven percent, nearly sixty percent. This is according to new numbers from MSD and Housing in the Urban Development Agency. In December last year, there were just over three thousand families in motels, now just thirteen hundred. Phil Gilbert is with us. He's the Community Housing ALTI at our chief executive Phil. Good morning, Oh hi, Paul.
Hi, right now, All good, it's early in the morning. Brother.
They gave me, Paul, tell me, do you buy these numbers? I mean it seems incredible.
Oh look, it's a big turnaround and in a short space of time, and yeah, we believe they are accurate. If you are looking at children, getting children out of motels, we think that's a fantastical idea, hugely supportive of it, and it seems to be tracking in the right direction.
Fantastic. Do you know where the twenty percent of people that leave and we don't know where they're going? Do you know where they're going?
Oh? Look, we've got a pretty good idea. We've got in the community sector, got about twenty thousand houses across the country, so about thirty five thousand New Zealanders go to bed every night in one of our houses, so we're picking up quite a few of them. But there's a lot more people been lost in the system who don't sell out a census data and who we're not picking up. So you can't take this measure as the only measure of homelessness to get an accurate picture of what's actually playing out in society at the moment.
The government has a target of fifteen hundred new social homes. This is by twenty twenty seven, which will be delivered by community housing providers, presumably like the ones that you work with.
Yep.
Is that doable?
Yeah, Look, that's absolutely right. That is our target. The government's backing our sector and it's our job to deliver those. Yeah, it is achievable. Look, we're with non solutions at the moment to find the billion dollars that's one thousand million dollars we're going to need to find pay for those houses and tracking very well. We've done those sorts of numbers historically over the last few years before, and so we're pretty confident we can deliver on those. Yes, we can.
Paul, what's changed. It feels like just a couple of years ago, even a year ago, this was an entrenched problem. We had thousands of families stuck in these motiles and no real prospect of them getting out, and now all of a sudden, it's like evaporating into thin air.
Oh yeah, Look, I think we have a tendency sometimes to oversimplify, but I think in general, communities, society, community providers, the government kind of or has been tremendously helpful with helping fix this problem. Most of the families who've been permanently housed have been housed by them, and your members need to your listeners, sorry, need to remember. KO has been building one in five houses in the whole country for the last few years, so they've been really cracking into getting new supply going. I think we've all decided that we don't think growing up in motels is a good place for kids, and when we focus on a goal like that in New Zealand, we can fix this stuff. Actually, we're a pretty small country and this is a man made problem in the housing crisis. We can actually undo it if we want to.
Paul, thank you very much for your time and your analysis. Paul Gilbert, the Community Housing Altie our chief executive for more from news talks b listen live on air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio