Review of older persons' housing

We’re doing a comprehensive review of our older persons’ housing portfolio for the first time in 30 years, to make sure we can continue to sustainably deliver this important service. 

Council decisions

The review of our older persons’ housing portfolio identified other operating models that could improve affordability and services for our tenants, while providing a more financially sustainable model for community housing provision.

As a result of this, at their meeting on Thursday 14 December 2023, Council decided to consult with our community through our Long-term Plan 2024–34 process, on possible operating models for the future. 

You can read the media release about this at Council investigating ways to secure older persons' housing in Kāpiti (15 December 2023).

Growing need

We believe there’s a strong case for growing affordable housing solutions for older people on the Kāpiti Coast.

With limited options for suitable rental accommodation, our older persons' housing is an oversubscribed service with significant waiting lists for prospective tenants.

This need is only set to grow. Kāpiti has a trend of reduced home ownership levels, and the largest growth in renter households over the next 30 years will be those aged 65 and over. In fact, this grouping is predicted to increase by 104 percent, or 1,820 households. Based on the demographic trends of our population there’s likely to be an increasing number of older people needing housing.

Opportunities and challenges 

As well as capacity, there are several challenges with our current model of delivering this important service:

• Kāinga Ora and Community Housing Providers (CHPs) can access an Income Related Rent Subsidy, which means they can set rent at 25 percent of the tenant’s net income (subject to thresholds), and government covers the difference between the tenant’s rental payment and the market rent for the property. Territorial authorities like councils can’t access this subsidy.
• Our ability to provide social, emotional, and physical wellbeing support services is limited. Some tenants may have complex needs that require specialist services. While we’re a responsible and conscientious landlord, we’re not currently placed or resourced to provide other welfare services. This may be something that could be delivered through partnerships with other agencies, depending on the recommendations to come out of the review.
• Our units aren’t wholly fit for purpose. The configuration of our housing means full wheelchair accessibility and functionality isn’t possible. Our complexes are also not necessarily in the best location for access to services like shops, medical centres, and government services.

Planning a service that meets our community’s needs

The key objective of our review is to look at how we plan for a fit-for-future service.

We aim to:

• support the ongoing sustainable delivery of older persons’ housing
• understand options to grow the current portfolio in an affordable manner to meet current and future needs
• make sure policy settings and governance arrangements are enhanced to provide safe, affordable and accessible options for the local community  
• improve the opportunity for people to “age in place” in Kāpiti, instead of having to move further away to find more affordable housing
• make sure the role of Council is clear and the required structure and policies are in place 
• ensure access to support services for tenants.

Working with our tenants

We’ve appointed The Property Group to help us carry out this important work. The Property Group have worked with councils across Aotearoa New Zealand to deliver similar reviews, and have good experience in some of the housing challenges our district is facing.

Over the last few months, we've been working closely with our tenants, community housing providers and special interest groups to:

• look at our role in providing older persons’ accommodation
• review our current asset and tenant management services to make sure services remain appropriate to meet current and future needs
• explore opportunities to expand or diversify the current portfolio.

A summary of this work and possible options are outlined in our:

• Review of Older Persons' Housing – Stage 1 report [PDF 6.43 MB]
• Review of Older Persons' Housing – Stage 2 report [PDF 1.08 MB].

Timeline