Assessing applications
Initial review
Once we receive your application, it goes through an initial review to ensure:
- your organisation meets the eligibility criteria
- all supporting documents have been provided, including the required financial documents as set out in the Performance Standards and Guidelines.
Once we determine that your application is full and complete, and you meet the eligibility criteria, we will advise you that we have accepted your application and we will allocate it for an in-depth assessment. We assess applications in the order we receive them.
Our application assessment process is comprehensive. Please be aware that all applicants may experience a waiting period of up to six months from the application being accepted to when it is allocated for the full assessment.
Assessment
Once an application is allocated, we’ll start an in-depth assessment of your ability to meet the performance standards.
During the assessment, we may need to ask you for more information or clarification about the information you’ve provided. If we need more information, we’ll send you a Further Information Request (FIR). You’ll be given six weeks to provide the additional information or clarification. Your application will go on hold until we’ve received the information or clarification. If you don’t respond to the FIR, your application will be declined.
Decision process
When we review your application for registration, we want to know that:
- community housing tenants will be housed appropriately for the duration of their housing need
- their rights under the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 are always protected(external link).
We decide this by assessing your capacity to meet the five performance standards:
- Governance: The provider will ensure it is well-governed at all times.
- Management: The provider is managed in a safe, efficient and effective manner at all times.
- Financial viability: The provider demonstrates financial viability and solvency at all times.
- Tenancy management: The provider is a responsive and effective landlord.
- Property and asset management: The provider manages its housing assets in a manner that ensures properties are suitable.
After we evaluate your application, we’ll make a recommendation to the Head of Community Housing Regulatory Authority, who will make the decision on whether the applicant should be registered.
Our principles
To help guide our work, we’ve a set of principles we apply when assessing applications for registration and continued compliance with the performance standards.
Fairness and consistency
We have fair, clear and open processes, and our decisions are made in an unbiased and consistent manner.
Proportionality
We consider the level of risk community housing providers and their tenants are exposed to, including size, scale, location and experience in carrying out regulated activities.
For registration, this means assessing whether the policies, procedures and systems an organisation has in place demonstrate the capacity to meet the performance standards for an organisation of its size and scale of housing provision.
For example, we wouldn’t expect a small community housing provider with 10 houses and no aspirations for growth, to produce as detailed a strategic plan as a large provider that has plans for large scale growth.
Transparency
This principle involves us being able to justify decisions and being open to public scrutiny. We collect, use and share the information we obtain in a manner that is consistent with the transparency statement from Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga – Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.