A five-step policy cycle In this section, we provide support for policy makers who wish to integrate human rights and te Tiriti o Waitangi into their housing policies. In 2021, the Commission published Aratohu Tika Tangata ki te Whai Whare Rawaka i Aotearoa: Framework Guidelines on the Right to a Decent Home in Aotearoa.17 The Guidelines are designed for a wide range of different audiences. This chapter is designed for housing policy makers. We provide a five-step policy cycle, checklist of questions, and short commentaries in support. The housing sector is exceedingly complex. It encompasses land use and planning, construction, monetary and fiscal policy, housing needs and support, Māori housing, Pacific housing, and much more. There is not one housing policy process but numerous multidisciplinary housing policy processes. While human rights lawyers have a role to play in these processes, they rarely have the expertise to know what a good housing policy looks like and how to operationalise the right to a decent home grounded on te Tiriti o Waitangi. The effective introduction of human rights in the housing sector can only be achieved by collaboration across a range of professions, including housing experts and practitioners, and communities. 16 Human Rights Commission Nobody expects housing policy makers to become human rights experts, but policy makers in the housing sector may benefit from familiarity with the right to a decent home. They need to have a sense of how to introduce the right to a decent home into policy processes. This chapter is designed to support these housing policy makers. While preparing this chapter, we have considered other policy guidance, for example, Providing for the Treaty of Waitangi in Legislation and Supporting Policy Design: Questions for Policy Makers.18 We have benefited from these precedents, discussion with policy experts, and insights arising from our Housing Inquiry. There are different ways of presenting the policymaking process. A well-established approach is to view it as a cyclical process with five stages of: • agenda setting • policy formulation • decision making • implementation • monitoring and evaluation. Policy makers then need to circle back and revisit the process in light of new data, evidence, and lessons learned. For present purposes, we adopt this five-step policy cycle and identify key human rights questions policy makers can ask at each step of the cycle.

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