■ Housing has become a topic of great discussion and following last week’s story on the subject, East Coast MP Dana Kirkpatrick thought it would be good to outline what is happening, so the public can understand the balance.

It is always easy to wax lyrical and give a one-sided view. but let’s remember the performance leading up to this – the $1m a day being spent on motels for families and children, the promise of 100,000 Kiwibuild homes, of which only 3000 were delivered, and the extraordinary performance of Kāinga Ora, which was found to be in financial freefall having bought extensive properties, pushing up the housing price and building ridiculously overspecced homes.

So, this Government has done a significant amount of work on understanding the housing situation, looking for solutions, hauling back the overspend and delivering homes in conjunction with iwi and other housing providers in our community.

Recently, we released the Homelessness Insights Report and announced a series of actions to reduce the number of people living without shelter, including those sleeping rough in New Zealand,

Homelessness is a problem New Zealand has grappled with for a long time. It is a symptom of a dysfunctional housing market and is exacerbated during challenging economic times.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s latest Homelessness Insights Report confirms what frontline organisations have been saying: there are too many people in housing need.

Accurate numbers are difficult to pin down – people without shelter often move around and may avoid engaging with government services – but it’s clear we have a real problem.

The Government takes this seriously. At present, over $550 million is spent annually across a range of programmes run by multiple agencies, including Transitional Housing, Housing First, Rapid Rehousing and many other support services.”

In the short-term, the Government has asked officials for advice on further targeted interventions to provide help and support to those living without shelter, including rough sleepers.

We’ve asked for recommendations around better utilisation of existing programmes and existing services, and we are also open to new ideas that will make an enduring difference.

We’ve made it clear that officials should engage with frontline providers to do this because they are the organisations working at the frontline of this problem.

We will not be returning to the previous government’s large-scale emergency housing model, which cost over $1 million a day at its peak and was a social disaster.

New Zealanders – including people sleeping rough – deserve better than that.

The Government has an existing review under way of housing support services.

There are hundreds of contracts for these services, and the system is complicated and often duplicative.

Our aim is to make the system simpler, more effective, and reduce duplication. We want to fund what works.

We’re also looking at how to better support people leaving residential support programmes or prison.

Stable housing is critical to successful reintegration and reducing reoffending.

We’re also looking at ways to improve the social housing system to ensure it delivers the right homes, in the right places, for the right people.

The Government has recently changed Kāinga Ora’s funding settings to enable the agency to build more one-bedroom units.

About 50 percent of people on the Housing Register require a one-bedroom unit, but they only make up about 12 percent of Kāinga Ora’s housing stock.