Christchurch city councillors will today consider signing off on the draft community housing strategy for public consultation, which says it will cost $256.8 million to help meet future social housing needs.
How this money is raised is yet to be determined.
City council staff have said funding the project directly could be something to consider, which would have an impact on rates.
However, the funding could also be met by other means that would have no impact on rates such as lending to community housing providers and seeking Government grants.
Even if the plan was fully approved, a lot would still have to be done by other social housing providers as the investment from the city council would only bring it to being responsible for 20 per cent of the city’s public housing stock.
The city council believes the demand for community and affordable housing will be “especially relevant due to the economic contraction caused by Covid-19.”
The need for social housing is forecast to increase by 62 per cent from 2017 to 2048.
Research from the Greater Christchurch partnership committee’s Our Space report also predicts there will be 14,000 more households classed as “stressed renters” by 2048, meaning they are paying more than 30 per cent of their income in rent.
This only reinforces the need for a broader community housing approach in providing secure and affordable housing for renters and owners according to the city council’s draft community housing strategy.
The draft plan states that while the city council has “a significant investment in its housing stock” further investment is required to maintain existing and further develop community housing to meet future demand.
“There is already an increasing waitlist of families, couples and individuals needing social or community housing. But the numbers are just going to keep going up under Covid,” he said.
In its draft plan, the city council states while most of its housing stock meets a satisfactory level, there remain 225 units which need to be replaced at an estimated cost of $67.5 million.
A further 136 units will also needed to be added to the city council’s housing stock at a cost of $40.8 million in order to restore the number of units at its disposal to pre-earthquake levels.
Restoring its housing stock to what it had before the earthquake sequence would leave the council with 20 per cent of all public housing across the city.
However, if it were to maintain this share of public housing it would need to build an additional 460 units over the next 10 years. This would cost an additional $13.8 million a year and $138 million in total over the course of a decade.
As part of the its proposed strategy, the city council also wants to reframe its social housing approach to a community housing one.
This would mean that a broader mix of housing tenures are proposed in future renewal and redevelopment initiatives.
