Reasonable steps

Temporary Additional Support is last resort financial assistance for clients who have regular essential living costs that cannot be met from their chargeable income and other resources.

To qualify for Temporary Additional Support a client must take reasonable steps to try to reduce their costs or increase their chargeable income, where possible.

Reasonable steps to try and reduce their costs or increase their chargeable income, may include but are not limited to, the client:

• no longer purchasing non-essential items
• seeking budgeting advice for help to reduce expenses
• re-negotiating debt repayments to a lesser repayment amount
• reducing costs by negotiating or applying for reduced payments of court fines
• reducing costs by using public transport
• requesting debt repayments to be temporarily stopped
• refinancing debt, for example a mortgage
• consolidating debt to reduce interest and repayment amounts
• seeking part-time or full-time paid employment, or increasing hours to increase income
• stopping contributions to KiwiSaver and/or other retirement schemes

You should consider declining, reducing or cancelling Temporary Additional Support where the client has not taken reasonable steps to reduce their expenses or increase their chargeable income, where possible.

There will be some situations where the client may not be able to reduce their expenses or increase their income, in these cases a client may still qualify for Temporary Additional Support.

Generally you would not consider a step 'reasonable' if it has not been discussed with the client. This would usually mean not considering discretion to cancel or decline Temporary Additional Support until the client re-applies and you have checked whether they have undertaken the steps identified when they were granted Temporary Additional Support.

However, it is not essential that a step has been discussed, and there could be exceptions where the client would have been aware that it was reasonable for them to have taken a particular step. For example, a client turning down paid employment that they were clearly capable of doing.

It is important to note that clients do not have to complete all the reasonable steps discussed at application, as long as they take some steps. If the client has not completed the steps, you should consider:

• why the client was unable to complete the steps
• whether the client has completed steps that were not discussed at the prior application
• whether the steps discussed are still relevant for the client to take

Where a client was unable to take a reasonable step, you should discuss why this was not taken and note it.

In some areas there are limited housing options and accommodation costs are less affordable, for example in Auckland. In these areas it is unreasonable to expect clients, who have secured a tenancy and have limited housing options, to be looking for less expensive housing solutions where the housing option is the most reasonable option for their situation.

In this situation, you can consider that trying to find other more affordable housing is not a reasonable step that the client needs to take before they may be granted Temporary Additional Support, to help meet the regular and essential costs of the accommodation they have already found.

You can consider paying at the start of the tenancy to help a client access a tenancy or during the tenancy to help them sustain the tenancy.

Examples

A sole parent with 2 children has been offered a tenancy for a house that meets their needs but the amount of rent means that the client would struggle to meet other costs once the rent is paid. It is a suitable area for the client to live in, and the area has limited housing options. It would be reasonable to grant Temporary Additional Support and not expect the client to find other accommodation to reduce their costs.

A couple with 2 children own their own home. The main income earner recently lost their job and now receives Jobseeker Support. If they sold their house, they would have difficulty in finding a rental that they could afford as the area they live has limited housing options. Their mortgage payments are less than the current market rents for the area. It would be reasonable to grant Temporary Additional Support and not expect the client to reduce their costs by finding other accommodation.

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