Providers are also responsible for working with families to help them access any support they need, such as budgeting advice or social services, and to support clients to move from transitional housing into longer-term housing. If the client is not already on the housing register, the provider must ensure they are assessed for eligibility. Providers are also required to encourage clients to move into longer-term private rentals.24 In practice, however, many clients are unable to meet private rental costs and have no option but to stay on the housing register and in transitional housing until adequate public housing can be found. Transitional housing includes newly built properties, repurposed properties, motels, and properties leased from the private market. Clients in transitional housing are required to pay rent of up to 25% of their income in line with incomerelated rents for public housing.25 The contribution is assessed by, and paid to, the transitional housing provider. Each contracted housing provider receives payment from MSD (transitioning to HUD in 2023) for the remaining expenses. Motels were first used as transitional housing in 2017. This has continued, with HUD now contracting a number of motel blocks to operate entirely as a transitional housing property (usually with contracted social service providers on site to manage the facility). During the first COVID-19 lockdown, HUD also contracted over 1,200 motel places to ensure vulnerable people would have somewhere safe to stay. These ‘COVID-19 motels’ include support services but are not transitional housing. We note the Government is continuing to contract motels as both COVID-19 motels and transitional housing, while waiting for new purpose-built transitional housing facilities to be built.26 Government has also signalled that “there may be an opportunity to convert [these motel places] to more permanent accommodation following the ongoing Emergency Housing review.”27 HUD now manages the contracting of transitional housing providers, but MSD continues to administer the referral and assessment process. The goal is still to provide temporary accommodation for individuals and whānau who do not have anywhere to live, and tailored support to help them move into long-term housing, and the intended timeframe for stay is still an average of 12 weeks.28 However, as with emergency accommodation, the average length of stay is now much longer. The median length of stay in transitional housing for reported households who have exited the service during the FY2021/22 was 18.1 weeks. In exceptional cases, residents may end up in transitional housing for years at a time.29 21