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Speaker 1: The government is having a party. They're celebrating hitting its

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Speaker 1: KPIs five years early. When it comes to reducing the

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Speaker 1: number of people in emergency housing hotel motels by seventy

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Speaker 1: five percent. They gave themselves five years to do that.

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Speaker 1: They've done it already. There are now just under six

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Speaker 1: hundred households in emergency motels and Damapotaka is the Associate

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Speaker 1: Housing Minister and joints now.

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Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, tamer Hey Kire, how are you today?

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Speaker 1: I'm very well. You've beaten your own target by five years.

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Speaker 1: So was the target too easy?

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Speaker 2: Look? I think that there are a lot of key

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Speaker 2: we's are doing it tough out there in housing, not

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Speaker 2: only those that have been living in motels, but there's

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Speaker 2: a real serious housing crisis out there. We've worked hard

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Speaker 2: at focusing on achieving the target, which we thought was

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Speaker 2: a challenging one, but one we could really commit ourselves to.

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Speaker 2: I think through the hard work of many officials, a

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Speaker 2: bit of political leadership, and some pretty diligent decision making,

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Speaker 2: we're be able to reach the target. But now there

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Speaker 2: is the question of maintaining the target, maintaining where we're at,

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Speaker 2: and also dealing with the bigger emergency out there.

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Speaker 1: How did you do it well?

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Speaker 2: We were really careful and clear about eligibility for people

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Speaker 2: to go into emergency housing. That was one of the

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Speaker 2: steps that we took, So being absolutely clear about who

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Speaker 2: is eligible to get into emergency housing and making sure

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Speaker 2: it's for a genuine need to the right question to ask.

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Speaker 2: The second thing was that we provided a lot of

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Speaker 2: support around housing brokers and navigators and others to enable

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Speaker 2: people to come out of emergency housing, but also for

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Speaker 2: those people that might fall in to keep them out

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Speaker 2: of emergency housing, so that it was a variety of

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Speaker 2: products that we could help housing support products help people

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Speaker 2: stay out of emergency housing. The third thing we did,

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Speaker 2: which was massive, was really focusing on committee or children

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Speaker 2: and ensuring that they were prioritizing the social housing witless.

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Speaker 2: So as there were thousands of children in emergency housing

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Speaker 2: when we came into administration, we said, hey, children's a

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Speaker 2: big focus. We've got to get commodiquy out of motels

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Speaker 2: and hotels, dank ones, get them in a stable situation.

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Speaker 2: And as a result of that decision, we're able to

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Speaker 2: fast tract children and their families out and now two

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Speaker 2: thousand plus children have come out of emergency housing since

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Speaker 2: we took office.

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Speaker 1: But critics say, you check them out of the motels

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Speaker 1: and you don't know where they are now. Is that true?

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Speaker 2: That's very unfair and deliberately confusing. We actually arrived and

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Speaker 2: we knew where about fifty percent of people we're going

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Speaker 2: at that time when they left emergency housing. Now we

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Speaker 2: know where they are about eighty percent of people going.

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Speaker 2: There are a number of people we don't know where

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Speaker 2: they're going. People don't have to tell us, but we

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Speaker 2: do know where About eighty percent of those exiting emergency

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Speaker 2: housing are landing, whether or not it's social or transitional

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Speaker 2: fifty five percent or private housing maybe about twenty five

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Speaker 2: twenty six percent. What we also are very very happy

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Speaker 2: with is the number of tamochiq yekn that have come

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Speaker 2: out of emergency housing. We've got a couple of other

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Speaker 2: ideas that are currently in play. We've really focused on

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Speaker 2: tomodache Now. We've started up a bit of a programund

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Speaker 2: singles in couples with out tamdikey those that have been

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Speaker 2: in there for a very long time two or three years,

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Speaker 2: and trying to get them out as well.

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Speaker 1: Good stuff. Tymer Portaka currently I'll have to know. I

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Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time today.

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