Tēnā koutou
At the time of writing, Auckland has unfortunately entered another COVID-19 lockdown. As per Government advice, everyone has to stay at home and limit their physical contact with neighbours, family, friends and others in the wider community as much as possible. If you do have to leave your unit for essential reasons only (eg, going to the supermarket or attending important medical appointments), it’s important to keep a two metre distance from others and wear a mask at all times.
The need to keep to your ’bubble’ is back, and it’s not clear how long this new lockdown will last, so I encourage you to follow all the recommended safety precautions for the foreseeable future.
The Haumaru team will continue to put the health and safety of our tenants first, and we’ll follow all the advice from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. If you need any particular help, we’re only a phone call away and you can call us 24 hours a day on our hotline: 0800 430 101. You can read more about our work to keep everyone safe at www.haumaruhousing.co.nz/covid-19-updates/
Please be reassured that you’re not alone and we’ll always help in whatever way we can.
Ngā mihi maioha
Gabby Clezy,
Chief Executive Officer
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Staying safe from COVID
Everyone aged 65-plus who’s registered with a GP or other health provider should by now have received an invitation to book their free COVID-19 vaccination appointment. If you’re not booked in yet, call the COVID Vaccination Healthline on 0800 28 29 26 to arrange an appointment. If you have any questions about the vaccine, go to covid19.govt.nz for reliable and accurate information.
The best ways to prevent any possible risk of contracting the virus when there’s an increased risk of community transmission are:
• staying at home as much as possible
• washing your hands thoroughly and frequently
• wearing a mask on public transport and elsewhere in public, and when visiting essential services such as pharmacies and petrol stations
• practising physical distancing
• coughing and sneezing into your elbow
• keeping track of where you’ve been, by scanning in with the NZ COVID-19 tracer app on your phone and with Bluetooth tracing turned on (if you’re keeping a written record, you’ll still need to sign the contact tracing registers available when you visit places like shops)
• getting your vaccination.
If you have cold or flu-like symptoms or have been in a location of interest during the timeframes in question (as detailed at www.health.govt.nz), call Healthline on 0800 358 5453 for advice on what to do to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
These rules will help protect us. Stay safe.
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Warm homes initiative
As part of our scheduled maintenance activity, we’ll be starting a programme to install fixed heating in all units, which will be either heat pumps or panel heaters. This is in keeping with the Healthy Homes Standards that will come into effect for Community Housing Providers on 1 July 2023. It will roll out across all villages. It will take us a while to get round all 1,446 units across our 62 villages, but we’ll notify you in plenty of time when we’re expecting to come to your village. This initiative will further enhance our tenants’ enjoyment of their homes and help ensure that people are warm, dry, comfortable and content living in their Haumaru village.
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Celebrating ‘Howick Heroes’
Tenants of Howick’s Minerva Court enjoyed a special lunch event at the Howick bowling club on 6 August, along with seniors from the local Selwyn Centre. The afternoon brought together over sixty older people from the area who enjoyed lunch and musical entertainment, and was made possible by New World Howick. The Selwyn Centre had been nominated by the supermarket’s customers to receive a donation as part of New World’s monthly charitable giving initiative. Thanks to this generous donation, our local Haumaru tenants were also invited and had a lovely time at this fantastic community event.
The Selwyn Centres offer weekly get-togethers for over 65s. To find a Selwyn Centre near you,
visit: www.selwynfoundation.org.nz/community/social-engagement/selwyn-centres/.
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Sweet-toothed tenants
Chelsea Sugar Factory was the destination for a trip in the community minivan on 27 July for tenants of North Shore’s Preston and Belmont Courts. On this sugar rush, tenants enjoyed a tour and were then joined for high tea in the Sugar Café by Community Managers Tracey, Lisa and Mirela, Customer Service Coordinator Debbie Veninga and Selwyn driver John. Minivan outings regularly depart from the villages to a wide range of places of interest, so do ask your Community Manager for details of your next trip (COVID Alert Levels permitting).
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2021 Tenant satisfaction survey results
Thank you to everyone who participated in our annual satisfaction survey. We were delighted to have the highest response rate ever – 65%. This means that the valuable feedback received is a good representation of our tenants’ views and their ideas on how we might further improve our services to you. The following is a snapshot of the key results:
• When asked specifically how satisfied overall tenants were with the service provided by Haumaru Housing, an overwhelming 94% said they were satisfied.
• People continue to be very positive about the quality of the maintenance work undertaken (92% satisfied) and the ease of contacting someone who can help (91%). Tenants’ satisfaction with the overall service provided by contractors ranks highly at 94%.
• In terms of grounds maintenance, 89% of tenants are satisfied with this and with the frequency of lawn mowing, and 93% are happy with the contractors’ manner.
• 92% of tenants are satisfied with the service provided by Haumaru staff in general, and continue to be most satisfied with the quality of the communications received (94%) and the support provided by staff (90% satisfied).
• Almost all tenants (93%) continue to be satisfied with their current level of connection and involvement.
• Tenants continue to be most positive about their good neighbours, the privacy and peacefulness of their village, the proximity of their village to amenities such as shops and public transport, and feel safe/secure (92% said they feel safe in their home and in their village).
Of course, there’s always opportunity for improvement, and we’ve already made a few changes in certain areas. We’ve put in extra resources to ensure we respond to service requests in a timely manner, and give tenants timeframes for when work requests should be attended to.
We’ll be continuing with all the village activities and will have a particular focus on enabling greater digital literacy for tenants through specialist community-based programmes. In this way, we’ll support you to make best use of the internet and your digital devices, so you can stay connected with friends, family and a wide range of service providers.
Thank you again for all your engagement in this initiative. We thought we’d end with just a sample of the lovely comments that tenants submitted as part of the survey:
