The Otago Housing Alliance will draw together a variety of organisations, ranging from community housing providers to town planners, to address housing issues in the region.
Cosy Homes Trust chairman Aaron Hawkins, who is leading the alliance, said the group would focus on ways to support programmes that would encourage better community housing.
"We don't want to just be a complaints shop though, so we're working with mana whenua, and a collective of community housing providers, to develop local responses to increase the supply of much needed public housing.
"Our government has been pretty clear that they don't see it as their job to do this, and that communities need to do it themselves, so let’s design that for them and see them put that rhetoric into practice."
Mr Hawkins said the trust came to a crossroads about two years ago, where it had to decide between winding up its operations or extending them.
"We went out [into] the community and they supported the second option.
"We've been looking at what shape that would take.
"The network is pretty broad — as a collective we have public health advocates, not-for-profits, basically anyone who is interested in being part of the solution."
The alliance had been resourced for its first year.
The project’s range would extend beyond Dunedin to also include areas such as Queenstown, which was grappling with a major accommodation shortage.
"While the issues would look different in each part of the region, we all have the same problem which is we don't have enough adequate and affordable housing."
Mr Hawkins said fundamentally, it was question of supply.
"We don't have enough quality homes that people can afford to live in, but in the short term we can help people in the houses they do live in by retrofitting insulation and cleaner forms of heating.
"Ultimately, we have to be look at how we build more houses.
"We have to be optimistic because the alternative doesn't bear thinking about."
Collaboration was vital, and Mr Hawkins pointed to the Russell Lund and Salvation Army community housing development that opened in Dunedin earlier this year.
"That was a direct result of a city council forum, where a developer happened to be in the room with a community housing provider and officials from the council.
"As a result of that, there are 30 new affordable apartments in the city that wouldn't have existed otherwise. This stuff can be done."
The alliance was also interested in research proposals that would improve approaches to community housing in the region.
"It’s about trying to do what we can in the short term while also thinking about the issues in the longer term."
