Introducing Our Founding CHA HUB Partner
CHA and Westpac New Zealand: a partnership to help more New Zealanders into homes
Heiko Jonkers
Head of Social & Affordable Housing at Westpac New Zealand
Westpac New Zealand is committed to helping more New Zealanders into their own homes, as well as working to understand and overcome the barriers that prevent some New Zealanders from finding a place to call home. We are committed to supporting the affordable housing sector.
We're delighted to be entering into a new partnership with Community Housing Aotearoa (CHA) that will help us to realise these aims, supporting the organisation in its mission of delivering affordable housing solutions to communities throughout the country.
The partnership with CHA is the latest milestone on Westpac's journey. We recently committed to increase lending in support of affordable housing to at least $1 billion by September 2027.
And over the past few years we've worked closely with a range of community housing providers, including Māori and iwi, to support their innovative pathways to home ownership, including Shared Equity and Secure Home Leasehold programmes.
Through these solutions, we've seen more than 700 families secure their own homes, and we see the potential to help even more New Zealanders to achieve their home ownership dreams through greater collaboration, with housing providers and the wider sector.
We are grateful to CHA members, NZ Housing Foundation and Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust for their generosity in sharing their programmes and knowledge to support other community housing providers to grow.
In supporting further growth, we believe CHA's on-the-ground insights combined with our financial expertise and strength will ultimately enable greater delivery of practical, scalable housing solutions. As well as providing funding to CHA, we will work with them to help community housing providers to expand their impact.
For Westpac, the partnership represents our commitment to being part of a greater solution that is community led. It's about stepping up to help create a better future for Aotearoa together.
Me mahi tahi tātou mo te oranga o te katoa – working together for the wellbeing of everyone.
If you'd like to chat about how Westpac can help, please get in touch any time by emailing: heiko.jonkers@westpac.co.nz
A response from CHA
We are delighted to welcome Westpac as the founding partner of the CHA HUB.
Westpac's commitment and financial support will enable CHA to develop aspects of the CHA HUB over the next 2–3 years, providing essential toolsets, research, and insights to support community housing providers, and raise awareness of housing challenges across Aotearoa New Zealand.
We sincerely thank Westpac for their partnership and look forward to working together to help make the CHA HUB a great success.
