How we work: Tenancy

A warm, dry, secure home is the foundation for a great life so we’re committed to helping tenants achieve sustainable tenancies.

We do all you’d expect from a landlord, from helping people settle into new homes, to managing tenancy agreements and relationships, to working hard to fix things if something goes wrong.

But we’re a tenancy manager with a difference: we’re a community housing provider focused on helping tenants get better outcomes in life, as-in their tenancies.

To do this, our tenancy operations team works in these specialist, interconnected service areas:

Major maintenance project coordinator Steve standing outside ŌCHT home

  • We begin our tenant-centric approach to continuity of care when we offer a home to someone from the Ministry of Social Development’s Public Housing Register. We match prospective tenant needs with housing typology and location and offer one-on-one support as people establish their new home. This allows us to identify root causes that may negatively impact their tenancy, to help us navigate them to the appropriate services and ensure we can offer appropriate support through their tenancy.

Tenant talking with people outside ŌCHT house

  • We work with tenants to help understand and meet their needs, and to understand and help address the root causes of any tenancy issues they face. We support tenants to develop plans to resolve issues and navigate them to external services where specialist help is needed.

Hand holding keys

  • We’ve got the same legal responsibilities as other landlords and we’re careful to separate our compliance functions from the tenant support work that addresses issues before they escalate. Our Compliance Advisors manage our formal role as landlord, including home access, complaint investigation and resolution, and any matters that move through the formal Tenancy Tribunal process. Our Accounts Advisor provides proactive follow-up and intervention at earlier stages of rent arrears and navigates tenants to services and support networks that can help.

Children playing basketball in ŌCHT community

  • Each of our advisor team members have a particular focus on a group of communities, ensuring relationships grow and community-specific needs are understood and met.

ŌCHT Housing Champion Elise-Maree wearing headset on the phone

  • Our Housing Champions are the voice of ŌCHT. They’re our call centre team, and the answer hundreds of calls a week and ensure tenant enquiries are well managed. Our Housing Champions know how our communities tick and they are skilled at ensuring community-specific needs are understood and met from the first call.

ŌCHT digital coach class, close up laptop

  • ŌCHT actively works to help; tenants enhance their wellbeing and sustain their tenancies. Our employment and digital coaches help tenants gain and use new skills to enjoy better life outcomes.

    Our employment coach helps tenants become work-ready, helping them access work opportunities and supporting them as they transition to work.

    Our digital coach helps tenants master their digital devices to access the services and support they need in our increasingly digital world. We offer digital training and we facilitate access to digital resources for tenants in need.

ŌCHT whanau support worker talks with back of woman's head

  • Our whanau support worker aims to help enhance tenant wellbeing and promote participation in and connection with the wider community. One-on-one and facilitated group approaches help identify and respond to whanau’s unmet needs, strengthening neighbourhood connections, and helping tenants find and access the services and community groups that will support them as their whanau grows.