In his April 2019 Letter of Expectations to Housing New Zealand, the then-Minister for Housing and Urban Development, the Hon Phil Twyford, wrote that “Disabled people face unique challenges including accessible housing being in short supply. I expect Housing New Zealand to improve accessibility in its houses to better provide for the needs of its tenants now and in the future”.
There are opportunities, given the unprecedented scale of Housing New Zealand’s building and redevelopment programme across the country, to ensure that accessibility features are considered at the start of projects.
Housing New Zealand has also developed our Customer Strategy 2018 as an organisation-wide way to focus on our customers and their families/whānau now and in the future – and their changing needs. The vision of the Customer Strategy is that ‘Our customers live well, with dignity and stability, in connected communities’. As part of developing our Customer Strategy 2018, we identified different groups of our customers who may have particular needs, including housing needs, and may need more support to live well. One group is those people with access and mobility needs.
Currently, according to what we found when developing our Customer Strategy, one third of our customers report an impairment or disability. Our data do not currently distinguish between short- and long-term limitations caused by impairment or disability or the specific nature of these limitations. This is a significant gap in our knowledge that we are working to fill. We want to better understand our customers’ needs so we can provide them with better services.
Housing New Zealand has a number of other strategies and plans that inform and link into this Accessibility Policy, including our Asset Management Strategy. The Asset Management Strategy sets out:
- how we will manage the homes we already own
- where, when and how we will build new homes
- how we will respond to the changing needs of New Zealanders through the homes we build, develop and manage.