3. An independent advisory and advocacy group grounded on Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The right to a decent home requires housing initiatives to be evidence-based with attention to both the kāwanatanga sphere and tino rangatiratanga sphere of authority. We recommend an advisory and advocacy group with responsibility for providing expert advice and commissioning research, including Te Ao Māori perspectives and concepts of housing. The right to a decent home entitles individuals and communities to active and informed participation on issues relating to housing, including policy making and accountability. The advisory and advocacy group would also be responsible for ensuring that voices from all segments of society are heard, especially those who are most impacted by the housing crisis. It is crucial that all those with lived experience of inadequate housing and homelessness, are heard and listened to. There are different ways this recommendation could be implemented and become an indispensable part of the housing landscape. Here we focus on what is needed rather than the institutional form it should take. However, we favour an advisory and advocacy group that is small, nimble, working online and face-to-face. We envisage the group would need regional and national components. There might be different arrangements in different regions: what works well in one region might not be suitable in another. The regional component might align with the 14 focus areas identified in GPS-HUD, while also giving attention to regions The group should also be alert to the regional long-term spatial strategies in the proposed Strategic Planning Act, which is one of the three proposed pieces of legislation to replace the Resource Management Act 1991.52 The group’s regional and national components would not be a substitute for the many dynamic civil society, and other, organisations in the housing space. They would be an additional, established, reliable ‘pathway’ for the views of civil society, and others, to be channelled to those in positions of power. We have an open mind about where the advisory and advocacy group might be located. One option is that it is located within, but at arm’s length from, HUD. This would be along the lines of the recently established Consumer Advocacy Council, located within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and outlined in the Appendix to this report. Finally, we note the current health reforms include a Health Charter.53 The Royal Society Te Apārangi recently called for a “housing equity charter …underpinned by partnership obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and by the human right of every person, no matter their circumstances, to live in affordable healthy housing.”54 We recommend the advisory and advocacy group has responsibility for preparing, by way of a consultative process, te Tiriti-based Housing Charters for different segments of the housing system e.g. a Tenants Charter. These short, non-technical, accessible charters would build on the statutory guiding principles in Recommendation 1. that fall outside the GPS-HUD focus areas.51 31