Dominic and his team support low-income households to own their own home. Dominic says, “There are several hundred thousand households throughout New Zealand caught in the position where most of their money's consumed in rent and simply staying alive, so they don’t have the financial ability to service an expensive mortgage and save a deposit.”

Housing Foundation builds houses where there’s a need for homeownership. Dominic explains, “We target areas dominated by rental housing, where people have put down roots. They may work locally and their kids go to school nearby, but as renters, they are vulnerable to every decision their landlord makes. We give them the opportunity to buy a home in their community so they can stay and continue to belong and participate in their community.”

Housing Foundation is also quite unique in the community housing sector in New Zealand because they build houses. Dominic says, “We have an experienced and skilled development team. It’s not the typical model here, but it’s more common overseas, and it’s a model that works well when managed well, as we can better control costs and strip out development margins, with the purpose of making housing more affordable. Our focus is reinvesting surpluses from our developments to help more families become homeowners.”

More and more people are retiring with debt

When the Foundation first contacted Gemelli, they were looking for someone to help them understand housing needs and solutions for older adults. Dominic explains, “We know there's a cohort of older people who retire with significant mortgage debt. This is a group who are very much on their own, with very limited support, and they're a group getting bigger and bigger, who will likely quickly fall into poverty as they age.”

“Gemelli discovered about 70,000 households in New Zealand retiring with debt who may fall into this description. We’re interested in what we can do to empower these retirees with modest budgets to continue to live independently in a home they own or part own. We want to give them dignity in retirement and remove the responsibility of housing them from the government, We’re working on solutions with Gemelli, who are doing financial modelling to test our ideas.”

“Gemelli is very good at understanding problems, unearthing relevant background, and prioritising needs. That gives us a better sense of how to pilot a new idea safely because we haven't got money to burn building houses for a new initiative only to find our plan hasn't worked. We want to build based on a safe hypothesis. For example, we suspected there was an issue around housing for retirees. But we needed to know how big the problem is, why this is happening, and what other issues these people are facing, because that helps drive the solution. Gemelli’s ability to give us the data we need to focus our future strategy is a real strength.”

Exploring new housing ownership and funding models 

After researching the housing challenges facing retirees, Gemelli helped the Foundation investigate new housing ownership models. Dominic says, “We challenged Gemelli to find other affordable home ownership models for areas like Auckland, Wellington, Tauranga and Hawkes Bay. The work they came back with was insightful.”

Like most community housing providers, the Foundation is reliant on government funding. Dominic explains, “One challenge we've set ourselves is to find ways to access non-government finance. It’s not an easy challenge because the Achilles heel of our affordable home ownership models is that they don’t provide a regular or market return on investments.”

“Gemelli is testing the environment to see if private investment and philanthropy are realistic funding models for us. Our goal is to build a fund of 50 to 100 million dollars within the next year or so, to fund the construction of 250 to 500 new affordable homes. If we can unlock this investment, we can test some of our ideas for retirees and alternative home ownership models in high-cost areas.”

Strong communicators & strong collaborators 

Expertise is all important. But so is how you get on. Dominic explains, “Working with Gemelli is insightful and importantly fun, you can have a good laugh with them, and that matters. But then when we get down to business, they’re very professional. Gemelli is very clear about timelines. In the past, I’ve found consultants overpromise and then don't deliver, and that’s a real bugbear of mine. When we’ve agreed on a deadline, Gemelli always delivers on time, and they always deliver what they say. They listen well, they ask good questions, and they’re knowledgeable, experienced researchers who communicate without losing people in statistical jargon.”

Shared values are also key to Dominic and his team. “We're very values-driven. It’s important to us to work with like-minded people and Gemelli is strongly guided by values too. I don't have to explain why we do what we do. Some commercial organisations struggle to understand our purpose. In the past some consultants have said things like, ‘Why don't you charge families interest on the capital you leave in their house?’ Gemelli gets our vision.”

“Gemelli also challenges our assumptions and tests our thinking. Evidence is important, because what we do can be highly emotive, and it’s easy to let emotions drive the argument rather than facts. Gemelli listens to our propositions and helps us test our ideas.”

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