Christchurch council urged to 'do the right thing' over social housing insulation

Wednesday, 21 August 2019

The Christchurch City Council said it couldn't insulate some of its social housing units because of their design, but an insulation professional believed many of them can be insulated. Video from 2019.

Freezing Christchurch social housing units could be made warm and dry as early as December 2020.

Stuff this month revealed 930 council-owned units remain uninsulated after being made exempt from minimum standards for rental properties that came into force in 2016.

Tenants spoke out about enduring cold, damp, mouldy homes after complaints to property managers appeared to make no difference. The Tenants Protection Association (TPA) has called the state of some of the homes 'deplorable'.

Stacey Shramka is getting sick after moving into a cold, damp council unit.

City councillors will now decide on three options to get the units fixed.

**READ MORE:

Concorde Place resident Charlie Betts, 81, is fed up at the lack of maintenance and insulation in his Christchurch council unit.

* Why are Christchurch's most vulnerable tenants freezing in council homes?

Stacey Shramka moved into a social housing unit in Christchurch area that was uninsulated but did not realise it would make such a difference. (Video published in August 2019).

* Offers to insulate freezing social housing units in Christchurch

* 930 Christchurch council units without insulation**

In report for Thursday's council meeting, head of facilities, property and planning Bruce Rendall has recommended either spending from a $20.7 million housing fund to make the upgrades over a longer time, taking out a loan to bring the work forward by a year or closing or replacing some or all of the substandard units.

Councillors would need to consider the funding challenges for social housing including a meagre, over-committed housing fund and a policy, which excluded the use of rates money, Rendall said.

Council-owned Concorde Place units are managed by the Otautahi Community Housing Trust.

'The level of funding has been less than what is required to maintain and renew the portfolio, with a significant deferred maintenance problem.'

It will cost $7.8m to $9.2m cost to retrofit uninsulated units and upgrade ventilation and heating, the report says.

Completion of $7.2m in earthquake repairs would deplete the housing fund to $13.5m by January 2020.

Additional work for all 2224 council-owned units, to meet a separate group of regulations for rental properties in the healthy homes legislation, would cost an estimated $7m.

If the council relied solely on the housing fund, it would need to phase the upgrade work for the exempted units over a longer period, so that the fund remained viable, Rendall said.

This option would aim to complete improvements to ventilation and heating by winter 2020, and insulation upgrades by winter 2022.

A second option of borrowing to bring the insulation upgrades forward by one year would address the issue more quickly, but could result in deferment of other maintenance and renewal works.

Rendall proposed a third option to close some or all of the substandard units and focus on building new, higher quality homes to replace them.

This would require working with one or more community housing providers to access government funding.

The close and replace option would avoid investment in units 'effectively past their economic useful life', but existing tenants would not be guaranteed a place in the new units, Rendall said.

There was also no guarantee funding for new units could be secured and this would create more uncertainty.

TPA chairman Anthony Rimell called on the council to 'do the right thing' by its tenants and upgrade the substandard units by winter 2020.

He had visited tenants in some of the uninsulated council units and was shocked by their condition.

'Too many are cold and damp. Even on sunny winter days the walls can stream with condensation,' Rimell said.

'For any landlord this would be unacceptable. For our council's social housing units, this is deplorable.'