Ask most people what a tenancy or property manager does, and the answer tends to focus on things like leases signed, repairs done, rent collected, properties maintained. These are real and important tasks. But they describe the work from the perspective of the building, not the person living in it.
What if we start from a different question: what does a home actually do for the person who lives there?
Homes are not just houses
In New Zealand, our housing conversations often occur around supply, affordability and tenure. Kiwis are interested in how many houses we have, how much they cost, and who owns them. These things matter enormously. But they are easy to discuss in an abstract way that can lose sight of the human reality at the centre.
To address this, at Home Foundation we created the HOME (Housing Outcomes and Multi-system Effects) model – a comprehensive systems map of New Zealand's housing system, developed for the Home Foundation and published in Policy Quarterly in early 2026. The wider HOME model maps seven interconnected subsystems to show how economic, political and social forces shape housing outcomes together, not in isolation.
At the heart of the model is the idea that the purpose of a housing system is human flourishing. This is represented in our Housing and Human Flourishing Framework. Human flourishing can be understood at the level of individuals, whānau or communities. We chose this concept because it is flexible and can include both objective outcomes, such as income and health, and subjective experiences, such as life satisfaction, belonging and security. It also connects with a broader view of people's capabilities and their ability to live the lives they value.
This framework shows how four housing foundations contribute to human flourishing: affordability, agency, place and quality. Together, these capture what households are really trying to achieve when they make housing decisions.
Our Housing and Human Flourishing Framework
Affordability – understood not just as "cheap housing" but as the ratio of housing costs to household income. Does a family have enough money to cover housing costs, with enough left for basics and to participate in community life.
Place – connects housing to community, opportunity and identity. It includes connection to land, access to jobs, marae, schools, transport, social services, and neighbourhood relationships.
Quality – covers whether homes are safe, warm, dry, accessible and appropriate for the people living in them – including in culturally specific ways.
Agency – reflects whether people have real control over where and how they live. This includes security of tenure, but also the freedom to make a home your own, and to move when opportunities arise.
Every housing decision involves trade-offs between these foundations. A large multi-generational whānau may sacrifice location to find a home where everyone can live together. An older person on a fixed income may pay more for a warm, dry home, trading consumption for quality. Or a family with children may choose to give up owning a home to rent in the zone of a school they would like their children to attend.
The flourishing framework makes the case that housing affects wellbeing through three connected pathways. First, relationships – the quality of family stability, connection and belonging that a home either enables or disrupts. Second, consumption – how much income remains after housing costs to spend on food, transport, education, and everything else that makes a life. And third, the lived environment – the physical qualities of a home and its neighbourhood, and how these shape health, safety, and identity.
When you think about housing through this approach, the purpose of tenancy management expands considerably. Managing a tenancy is not just about the physical asset. It’s about trying to maximise opportunities for tenants across each of these four domains and in doing so creating the environment to enable people to flourish.
The structural reality: not all trade-offs are choices
It is important to have clarity about what people-first tenancy management can and cannot do on its own. The constraints that most New Zealand households face are not just the result of individual circumstances. There is a wider housing system that shapes housing outcomes across multiple domains.
The fewer economic resources a household has, the narrower their options become – not just financially, but in terms of time, energy, cognitive load and resilience. Households living with housing insecurity carry higher levels of stress, face more frequent moves, and have less capacity to absorb shocks like rent increases or unexpected job changes.
These structural realities mean that the trade-offs between affordability, place, agency and quality are often not free choices at all. They are the constrained decisions of people navigating a system that has not been designed around their flourishing.
The wider HOME model shows clearly how housing market dynamics, fiscal settings, financial system pressures and social norms combine to produce these constraints – and why fixing one part of the system without understanding the others so rarely delivers the change people need.
People-first tenancy management operates within this reality. It cannot fix housing affordability on its own, or resolve all of the structural inequities. But it can make a genuine difference at the human level – by treating people with dignity, supporting stability where possible, and building the kind of trust that allows households to engage honestly when things are difficult.
This is precisely why the HOME model places human flourishing at the centre of its framework and why Te Wawata Kāinga's people-first approach is not simply a values statement. It is a practical response to what the evidence shows: that how housing is managed shapes wellbeing outcomes in meaningful ways. For the families navigating a system that is still far from just, it can make the difference between being housed and truly having a home.
Dr Jaimie Monk is Research Lead at the Home Foundation. She is a co-author of the HOME (Housing Outcomes and Multi-system Effects) model of New Zealand's housing system, published in Policy Quarterly (Vol. 22, Issue 1, February 2026). The full model is available at homefoundation.org.nz.
