April 09, 2024
Bishop eying targeted help for motel dwellers
Housing Minister Chris Bishop says micromanagement may be the way to get families out of the housing crisis.
The Government has set a target of reducing the number of whānau living in emergency accommodation like motels and boarding houses by 75 percent.
About 3000 families are in emergency accommodation, including about 800 whānau with tamariki who have lived there for longer than three months.
Mr Bishop says a social investment plan targeting individual whānau will be able to address issues like addiction and disability.
“What we want to do is really get down to the individualised needs of individual families and the communities in which they live and target support around them on a vey individualised basis and use data and evidence to guide that but we are doing quite a lot of work to drill into that and of course the Kainga Ora Review which is due back soon will help inform that,” he says.
The review is being led by former prime minister Sir Bill English, who as finance minsister attempted to introduce the social investment approach to public policy.