Creating Positive Pathways

People who leave prison without a stable home to go to are at high risk of experiencing homelessness and reoffending. Creating Positive Pathways (CPP) is a trial to help get them into stable housing and reintegrate into the community.

About Creating Positive Pathways

CPP is run by Ara Poutama Aotearoa (Department of Corrections) and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). It intends to show how providing access to stable housing can have a positive impact on people leaving prison, reducing reoffending and homelessness rates.

CPP aims to get a better understanding of what people leaving prison need to help them stay in stable housing and how this can help them achieve other goals, like getting a job and holding onto it.

Eligibility

CPP is for people who have recently been released, or are about to be released, from prison and:

don’t have access to stable housing
are at high risk of re-offending
are experiencing (or are likely to experience) homelessness.

They need to:

have served a sentence of more than two years, or had frequent interactions with the Ministry of Corrections
be assessed by MSD as eligible for public housing
have completed or are completing a Ministry of Corrections reintegration activity.

CPP uses similar principles to the homelessness response project Housing First. It recognises that it’s much easier for people to deal with issues such as mental health and addiction once they have a stable place to live.

See more about Housing First.

Creating Positive Pathways and MAIHI

Māori are disproportionately affected by the housing crisis. Te MAIHI o te Whare Māori - Māori and Iwi Housing Innovation (MAIHI) is a framework and strategy, created by Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga - Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in partnership with Māori, to reset the housing system so it delivers better solutions for Māori.

MAIHI’s vision is that all whānau have:

access to warm, dry and safe homes, with the security of being able to stay in them for as long as is appropriate for their circumstances
connections to the services they need to be able to sustain their housing
opportunities to fully participate in their communities.