About CHRA
What we do
CHRA works with Community Housing Providers (CHPs) that wish to provide quality social and/or affordable rental housing for those in need. Our role is to register CHPs who meet the eligibility criteria and the prescribed Performance Standards. We engage with registered providers to monitor their performance and intervene if they do not continue to meet the required Performance Standards.
Registered CHPs are eligible to enter into an Income-Related Rent (IRR) contract with Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga – Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to house people from the Public Housing Register. Any IRR contracts are at the discretion of the HUD Housing Supply team.
We provide an assurance to Government that registered CHPs are well-governed and deliver appropriate long-term housing services to their tenants.
Our responsibilities
To register
We engage with CHPs that wish to provide quality housing supply for those in need by:
- assessing and registering CHPs that meet the eligibility criteria and demonstrate the capacity to meet the performance standards.
- maintaining a record of registered CHPs that is accessible to CHPs, tenants and the public.
To monitor
We assess CHPs’ ability to maintain registration by:
- monitoring ongoing compliance by registered CHPs with the eligibility criteria and the Performance Standards.
- requiring information from CHPs, to supplement reporting or carry out our statutory functions – such as investigating complaints.
To intervene
Engaging with CHPs to identify potential risks to maintaining high standards of service delivery by:
- ensuring ongoing compliance by registered CHPs with the eligibility criteria and Performance Standards
- providing advice to address performance failure
- investigating complaints involving registered CHPs
- suspending or revoking registration when a CHP no longer meets the eligibility criteria or is failing to meet one or more of the performance standards.
How we operate
We apply the following principles when assessing an organisation’s application for registration and a CHP’s ongoing compliance with the performance standards:
- Fairness and consistency
We have fair, clear and open processes and our decisions will be made in an unbiased and consistent manner. - Proportionality
We consider the level of risk organisations and their tenants are exposed to, including size, scale, location and experience in carrying out regulated activities.
- Transparency
We collect, use and share information consistently with the Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga – Ministry of Housing and Urban Development Transparency Statement(external link).
What we don’t do
The following matters are outside our scope of work:
- disputes between landlords and tenants and other issues relating to the tenancy itself
- complaint hearing and intervention powers under the Residential Tenancies Act 1986, such as landlord and tenant disputes and tenancy protection
- statutory powers relating to CHPs under other legislation, such as the Charities Act 2005 and the Building Act 2004.
We can only investigate complaints that breach other legislation if the substance of the complaint has resulted in a registered CHP failing to meet the eligibility criteria and/or performance standards.