28 Dec Affordable Housing – Rental as a Viable Housing Option
BAF’s charitable company, Catalyst Housing Ltd, continues to focus on developing more effective approaches to affordable housing into the future building from our 2016 research. Within that research one of the recommendations was:
- There is a need to increase the availability of affordable, healthy long term rental options for low income households.
We have begun to frame up a focused research project that will respond to this recommendation using Taranaki as a case study. Our research will use both national ad international examples to inform its recommendations. At present the rental system in New Zealand is immature and inconsistent often leaving tenants without long-term security of tenure, undermining the existence of genuinely affordable rental options and exposing landlords to excessive risk. Most supposedly affordable rental options simply base their rent on a percentage of market rates, not a genuinely affordable rental that looks at the costs families can afford alongside what it actually takes to run and maintain rental properties. We will explore how the rental system can be advanced so that we can develop rental options for the future that are as attractive as ownership and can contribute to the available pathways for affordable homes for those that need them.