55048 (2025). Hon Kieran McAnulty to the Associate Minister of Housing

55048 (2025). Hon Kieran McAnulty to the Associate Minister of Housing: When calculating the current percentage of households that move from emergency housing into social, transitional, or private housing with government support, what follow-up period and inclusion or exclusion criteria are applied, if any, and what is the resulting percentage?

Hon Tama Potaka: I am advised by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) that the modelling provides a high-level overview of where people go after staying in emergency housing, examining what additional housing supports a client may access afterward such as Transitional Housing, Social Housing, or a return to emergency housing. The model is exploratory and was designed to explore trends and patterns over time, for research and analysis, and is based on administrative data. There will likely always be households whose accommodation status MSD cannot identify after they stop receiving support, as the available information is limited to what is shared and collected within MSD and HUD systems and people are not obligated to tell us where they go after staying in emergency housing. The percentages are derived based on the number of spells in EH that concluded during the reported month. A ‘spell’ is derived based on a combination of: a) a households’ declared check in and check out dates, and b) whether they do or do not return for a subsequent grant within four weeks. It is possible for a client to move out of EH and into a public or private tenancy (receiving AS) before their final checkout date. For example; if a client has been granted 14 days Emergency Housing Grant and part way through a property becomes available the Ministry does not expect the family to stay for the full 14 days in emergency housing. This would result in them exiting before the grant expired. MSD does not have an official measure for ‘exits’ from EH in its data. Unlike benefits, there is no process for cancellation. The model looks at housing supports accessed up to 60 days later. This includes clients who moved out before their end date. It only tracks the primary applicant for the emergency housing grant. Of the households who ended a stay in EH in June 2025: • 24 percent had attained a social housing tenancy (3 percent through community housing providers, 21 percent through Kainga Ora) • 23 percent had accessed Accommodation Supplement (this includes clients with mortgage, private rental or board costs) • 33 percent had been placed in Transitional Housing • 20 percent did not access any of these housing-related services. This is also my response to written parliamentary questions 55049 55050 and 55051 (2025).