Methodist Alliance New Social Housing Complex Christchurch.

Following on from Conference decisions encouraging parishes to find new and innovative ways to use resources to provide affordable healthy homes for New Zealanders in need, Christchurch Methodist Mission is expanding on long established church traditions. They recently celebrated the opening of a new social housing complex.

In recent years Te Hāhi Weteriana has explored new ways to build on the tradition of providing practical responses to vulnerable New Zealanders that reaches back to the mid-1930s when the Church started providing housing for the elderly and hostels for young Māori moving to work or study in the cities.

Steps taken since the 2020 Methodist Conference include recognising the mental, physical and social damage caused by the lack of affordable healthy housing and the decision at Conference two years later for Synods and other Connexional entities to identify suitable land in their area that could be made available for social housing.

Since then some parishes have negotiated long-term leases for building social housing with Methodist Community Housing Providers (MCHP) under a scheme where the houses are built and owned by the MCHP and an agreed land lease is paid to the parish. In Christchurch, the Christchurch Methodist Mission (CMM) has been in conversation with several parishes since then and recently opened a new social housing complex in Somerfield.

“MCHPs like CMM draw on our own financial resources and government subsidies to develop social houses on church land. We also manage the building project and provide wrap-around social support to the tenants after they move in,” says CMM Executive Director Jill Hawkey.

“We were very fortunate to receive a $750,000 grant from the Methodist Social Housing Fund plus a large anonymous donation from an individual. Together with a loan from the Methodist Trust Association, these funds enabled us to develop five housing units in partnership with the Christchurch South Methodist Parish.”

For Christchurch South Methodist Parish minister and CMM Board member, Rev. Andrew Donaldson, this partnership is business as usual for his church and its role in community and society. Simply put, it is at the heart of what being Christian is supposed to be about, he says.  

“The biblical narratives around housing the homeless, justice and hospitality, informed the decision at the 2022 Conference to consider releasing spare land for social housing projects, so it didn’t come out of the blue. Most of our churches have a community focus, some stronger than others. In our parish, community and outreach over many years has included running a community house in Barrington and offering a range of activities for people of various ages. St Marks is also a designated local response hub for minor emergencies.”

Responding with compassion to emergencies and community need is nothing new for a Church with a strong social conscience and a focus on justice. Andrew recalls that St Marks hosted several interfaith meetings following the 2019 mass shootings in the two Christchurch mosques, providing a safe space for the community to process the horror of the event and for connection and healing to take place.

Reflecting on the Somerfield Street social housing partnership, Andrew says that the project was informed by the tradition of good-neighbourliness. “This is a central theme in Christianity that’s expressed in the instruction to ‘love your neighbours as yourself.’ In action this is done through acts of kindness, compassion, and selflessness to those around us.”

While modest in scale, the Somerfield Street complex is an example of how parishes can work with housing providers like CMM to develop surplus land into affordable and secure homes for people who can’t afford to buy a house of their own or to rent at market rates.

Like many Methodist parishes, St Marks has members that are predominantly older, some of whom have mobility issues and require easy access to the church. This need was met in part by a roomy car park alongside the church that allowed people to park close to the entrance, thereby limiting exposure to the elements on cold and rainy days and providing a short transit between car and church.

“To make the housing complex work, the parish had to give up several of our valued parking bays. We were concerned this might inconvenience some of our members, particularly in winter. But they understand the importance of this project and together we’re managing the more limited on-site parking situation well now.”

Andrew and Jill are concerned about the state’s decades-long failure to build enough social houses and the consequences of the current wave of austerity economics that is causing job losses, heightened levels of anxiety among adults and children, and homelessness.

“If you look to the UK and the devastation caused by policies that we’re now following, it's just going to be diabolical. Government has turned its back on social housing and cut back heavily on a range of social services, and they’re making a lot of people unemployed. And then they hit them again with a crackdown on beneficiaries,” says Andrew.

Amidst the growing challenges across society, the Somerfield Street complex highlights the benefit of parishes and community housing providers working together to provide small-scale developments in local communities. However, as noted by Jill, the change in Government policy means that CMM’s current pipeline of projects is on hold.

“With over 2,000 households on the social housing register in Christchurch, it is a real concern that Government has not committed to supporting more of these partnerships. But our tradition encourages us to maintain hope and to work even harder to support whānau to thrive and to turn their dreams of a better future into reality.”