Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust (QLCHT) celebrated 15 years recently with over 243 affordable households across the Queenstown Lakes District since 2007.
The Trust has been designed as an affordable home pathway towards home ownership with various programmes dependent on client needs.
QLCHT chair Richard Thomas said there were a number of key factors which enabled the Trust to reach the 15-year milestone.
“Most notably these include the ongoing support of Queenstown Lakes District Council, which has gifted significant tracts of land to the Trust, along with facilitating further contributions of land from private developers through the inclusionary zoning process,” he said.
QLCHT executive officer Julie Scott, who has been with the Trust since it began said amongst celebrating the significant milestone the need for housing assistance remained, with nearly 800 households required to meet the growing demand.
“To this end we have a further 10 homes currently under construction in Northlake, earthworks are due to commence this spring on the 68 Lot Tewa Banks development in Arrowtown, and we have construction scheduled to start on 28 homes in Longview, Hawea early next year,” Ms Scott said.
Over the 15-year period, QLCHT has delivered homes throughout the district from Glenorchy through to Hāwea, including 19 homes in Wanaka. The QLCHT programme was founded out of the 2017 Mayoral Housing Taskforce. One of the programme options, the Secure Home model, recently won the Leading Innovation Award at the Australasian Housing Institute’s annual Brighter Future Awards.
