Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka (file photo). Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
The government has scrapped part of a work programme designed to prevent people ending up in emergency housing because the social development ministry cannot cope with the workload, official documents show.
A December MSD report to Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka said that was partly because it was too busy with work related to changes to the Jobseeker benefit.
But Potaka said while he agreed to end the first phase of the "early interventions" work to stop people needing emergency housing, the second phase would still go ahead, and he was due to receive advice on that "shortly".
The report showed phase one involved looking at what could be improved within the MSD system to help people struggling to get into, or remain in, a stable home.
Officials said they had started the work, but were too stretched to carry on.
"We do not recommend progressing further with phase one work at this time due to insufficient frontline capacity and wider organisational pressures," the report said.
"MSD's frontline capacity is currently oversubscribed, and there are wider organisational pressures because of the focus on implementing initiatives to support other government targets, including the Jobseeker target."
The government's plan to slash the number of people on the Jobseeker benefit includes MSD staff offering phone-based case management to 10,000 people and creating 'Individual Job Plans' for more than 70,000 people.
To do that, MSD had to drop the emergency housing early interventions work, the report said.
"If phase one were to continue, because it would require resources from across the organisation, there would need to be a trade-off against other MSD work programme priorities, including supporting the Jobseeker target."
MSD had made some headway on phase one, including gathering feedback from community housing providers and organisations supporting homeless people.
One of the themes that emerged was that a person's need for emergency housing was more likely caused by "systemic failures" - for example, poor communication between agencies like MSD, Health and Corrections - rather than the person themselves.
The report pointed to a dramatic decrease in the number of people in emergency housing, and said MSD had made a range of changes to help people into suitable homes.
That included tightening the criteria for emergency housing eligibility.
But MSD needed more time for those changes to bed in to see what impact they had, it said.
"We will be better placed to fully understand potential need and whether any new processes or changes are required, if more time is given to understand how the changes are interacting with each other and once planned evaluations have taken place."
Phase two work did not depend on phase one being completed, Potaka said.
"I did not agree to stop work on early interventions but rather chose not to further progress phase one of the workstream, which was focused only on MSD interventions within the current system," he said.
"The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is due to provide advice to me shortly on phase two of the work, which is expected to take a more holistic approach to reduce the likelihood of people requiring emergency housing (EH) support."
It is not clear what that holistic approach is.
Potaka's office said he would receive information on phase two in late April, and further details would be available "once decisions around phase two have been made".
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