3 March 2025
Craig Nielsen
[FYI request #29965 email] Tēnā koe Craig Nielsen
Official Information Act request
Thank you for your request of 13 February 2025, transferred to the Ministry of
Social Development from the Office of Hon Chris Bishop, requesting information
about the current waitlist for accessible homes in the Taranaki region and
nationally.
I have considered your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act).
Please find my decision your request set out below.
On 19 and 24 February 2025, the Ministry emailed you to clarify the following part
of your request:
•
Is it known the national demand for accessible homes, meeting the above
or better standard for the general public housing stock.
As noted in our initial email, the Ministry is able to provide information relating to
the number of people on the Housing Register waiting for an accessible home and
whether this would meet the intent behind the known demand for accessible
homes in your request.
On 26 February 2025, you advised you were looking for the following information:
•
By way of clarity to the "national demand for accessible homes". Yes, please
if you are able to provide the number of people waiting nationally, and in
Taranaki, along with the number built in the last five years, and the number
being built in the next 12 months to to years, or available time-frame.
As the Ministry does not have control over the supply of accessible housing, the
parts of your request relating to the number of accessible houses built or being
built was transferred to Kāinga Ora for response on 28 February 2025. This is
because the information is not held by the Ministry but believed to be held by
Kāinga Ora.
Regarding your request for the number of people on the Housing Register waiting
for accessible homes, please find attached
Appendix One containing
Table One
showing the number of applications who require modified housing as at 31 January
The Aurora Centre, 56 The Terrace, PO Box 1556, Wellington
– Telephone 04-916 3300 – Facsimile 04-918 0099
2025, broken down by register type, nationally, and selected Territorial Authorities
(TA).
The Social Housing Register consists of the Housing Register and the Transfer
Register. The Housing Register records those who are not currently in Public
Housing but who have been assessed as eligible for Social Housing. The Transfer
Register represents those already in Social Housing who are eligible to be
rehoused, generally due to a change in circumstances prompting a move to
somewhere more appropriate to their needs.
I will be publishing this decision letter, with your personal details deleted, on the
Ministry’s website in due course.
If you wish to discuss this response with us, please feel free to contact
[email address]. If you are not satisfied with my decision on your request, you have the right to
seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman. Information about how to
make a complaint is available
at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or 0800 802 602.
Ngā mihi nui
pp.
Anna Graham
General Manager
Ministerial and Executive Services
Appendix One
Table One: The number of applications who require modified housing as
at 31 January 2025, broken down by register type, nationally, and
selected Territorial Authorities (TA).
Region
Register Type
Total
Housing Register
Transfer Register
Taranaki
45
9
54
National Total
1,557
588
2,142
Notes:
• This only includes priority A and B applications.
• This includes applications on both the Housing Register and Transfer Register.
• This is a count of modified needs. A client may have more than one modified
housing need type.
• Territorial Authority (TA) is based on the main applicant's residential address as at
the end of each period.
• Ungeocoded address records that are unable to be matched to a TA through
suburb and city details have an unknown TA.
• Taranaki region includes New Plymouth District, Rangitikei District, Ruapehu
District, South Taranaki District and Stratford District.
• To protect confidentiality the Ministry of Social Development uses processes to
make it difficult to identify an individual person or entity from published data.
• These data tables have had random rounding to base three applied to all cell
counts in the table.
• A value of one or two will be rounded to three.
• The impact of applying random rounding is that columns and rows may not add
exactly to the given column or row totals.
• The published counts will never differ by more than two counts.
