Haumaru Housing

Background

Haumaru Housing was established in 2017 as a joint venture between Auckland Council and The Selwyn Foundation. A team of 26 staff is responsible for managing over 1,400 units across 63 residential villages in south, north, and west Auckland. Its vision is to be the leading provider of affordable rental housing for older people in New Zealand.

Goal

Haumaru Housing’s overarching goal was to have one source of truth for its asset management activities. There was a need to move away from purely reactive maintenance, to refurbishments, and to planning new residential villages. It needed evidence-based projects to bring the villages up to the standard aligned with Haumaru Housing’s goals.

Prioritising and managing refurbishments is key. Haumaru Housing’s residential villages are being systematically upgraded to meet the health, social, and community needs of older people. Additionally, the homes need to meet the Government’s Healthy Homes standards for heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture, and drainage. As well as being a legal requirement, compliance means that Haumaru Housing qualifies for an income related rental subsidy from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), which is an important source of funding. In addition, Auckland Council has committed to funding 10 years of fixed capex renewal projects based on forecast requirements when Haumaru Housing took over management of the portfolio.

Additional sources of capital funding are required for refurbishments, compliance and renewal works. Evidence-based reporting is crucial to justifying business cases for all capital expenditure on the villages.

Challenges

When Haumaru Housing was formed, it had had only limited information around the condition of the housing stock it had inherited from Auckland Council. The average age of its housing was around 50 years, with many 1960s brick-and-tile units. As well as some villages being tired in appearance, the portfolio would not meet the new Healthy Homes legislation,

The limited data set meant that Haumaru Housing did not have sufficient information to decide which residential villages to focus on first with upgrades. Choosing where and how to prioritise was challenging, with spending heavily biased towards deferred maintenance and repairs rather than upgrades.

Furthermore, Haumaru Housing is obliged to undertake tenancy checks every six months in order to maintain its status as a community housing provider (CHP) with the Ministry of Social Development. The organisation needed a system that would enable it to capture the data collected during checks and inspections to meet compliance requirements and plan for improvements.

Haumaru Housing consists of a small team of people, with limited resources, and the team has to be able to work smart to meet its organisational objectives.

Solution

Haumaru Housing realised it needed an asset management tool and went through a selection process, resulting in engaging SPM Assets.

Data, software, and reporting

SPM Assets initially set to work on a full survey of all Haumaru Housing’s villages in late 2017. On the basis of the survey work, SPM assisted Haumaru Housing with adjusting the software for their organisational requirements and provided training on how to use the tool. This meant the village information was available by early 2018 and reports could be processed quickly. The reports identified where the immediate capital investment needed to be prioritised to address existing village condition. This allowed Haumaru Housing to move from reactive maintenance and a backlog of maintenance issues, to a planned approach based on need and Haumaru Housing’s standards.

Haumaru Housing licenced the SPM Assets Project Planning module to enable it to operationalise the upgrade and refurbishment works program into logical work streams across the portfolio. Project planning enables users to scope assets for upcoming project works, identify costs, priorities and the year in which the work is planned for. These planned works can then be overlaid on future budgets and any shortfalls identified and addressed.

Meeting compliance needs

• Healthy Homes: SPM Assets software allows Haumaru Housing to identify what each unit needs to meet the legislated Healthy Homes standards. Haumaru Housing uses the Advanced Data and Property Quality Standards module within SPM Assets to collect and hold the Healthy Homes inspection data. It also generates a compliance statement for each unit that needs to be presented to new tenants.

• Community housing provider status: The six-monthly tenancy checks are done through the Property Quality Standards Module within the SPM Assets software. This allows Haumaru Housing to not only meet its compliance requirements but also allows the organisation to evaluate the fitness for purpose of each unit. Decisions regarding refurbishments and upgrades can therefore be made at each unit level.

Training

Haumaru Housing created a new role to achieve its organisational goals: a full-time Asset Project Manager. The role involves keeping the asset database up to date, as well as developing works programmes. SPM Assets provided training to the Asset Project Manager and supported them closely as they learned the system.

Asset Management Plans

Haumaru Housing updates its Asset Management Plan every two to three years, and SPM Assets works alongside the organisation to update the plan. The work reflects organisational changes over the period and on-going village improvement works.

Benefits

• The objective data from Haumaru Housing’s database provides evidence for the capital funding obligations required for the organisation going forward. Having reliable forecasts for capital budgets allows decision making for the medium-term and long-term and helps identify related operational funding required to maintain the asset base. This means Haumaru Housing can stay within its budget maintaining current villages, but also planning for the future, including bringing on new villages.

• Lifecycle costings within SPM Assets software allow Haumaru Housing to identify what the annual portfolio maintenance obligations are, so the organisation can plan in the longer-term for capex and opex requirements across the villages.

• Having accurate data on its costs means that Haumaru Housing’s rental rates can be based on actual operational costs.

• SPM Assets is a crucial tool to unlock the MSD’s rental supplement funding, as well as achieving Healthy Homes compliance. Plus the six-monthly tenancy checks can be readily completed to meet compliance needs.

• By embracing Asset Management Planning, Haumaru Housing achieved a 96% 'home maintenance' tenant satisfaction rate in 2020, a fantastic 23% increase since acquiring the portfolio in mid 2017.

What the customer says

“The use of this tool has taken our business to the next level. It’s allowed us to remain small, reactive, and responsive but produce the best quality, high performance data sets. It allows us to apply for capital funding, and allows us to forecast, and do everything we need to do to ensure we’re a high-performing community housing provider, based on the assets we have. We have a duty of care to these assets, and to the ratepayers of Auckland, our shareholders and to our people.”

Gabby Clezy – CEO, Haumaru Housing

“I really like working with SPM Assets and the tool itself. The company is very responsive to any queries I have.”

Jehan Hyder – Asset Project Manager, Haumaru Housing