Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
- Housing Minister Chris Bishop unveiled a turnaround plan for Kainga Ora on Tuesday
- A community housing provider says a net increase of 400 social houses a year "won't make a dent" in housing waitlist
- Dwell Housing Trust has echoed sentiments from the opposition that the plan could lead to more people on the street
A community housing provider is warning more people will become homeless under the government's new plan for its state housing agency Kāinga Ora.
On Tuesday, Housing Minister Chris Bishop unveiled the government's "turnaround plan" for the housing agency which includes 1500 new homes and 400 refurbishments annually.
This is offset however by about 800 sales and 700 demolitions annually.
Kāinga Ora chairperson Simon Moutter said the number of houses would "stabilise from 2026 onwards" at around 78,000, unless the Minister instructed the agency to add to its housing stock beyond that date.
The shake-up comes off the back of an independent review into Kāinga Ora led by Sir Bill English.
The report released last May showed the agency was "underperforming and not financially viable" and "not delivering the wider social housing results New Zealand needs".
The new strategy has been lambasted by both Labour and the Greens, who both say it will only make more people homeless.
Dwell Housing Trust chief executive Elizabeth Lester said with a social housing wait list of 20,000 and 1000 households in emergency housing, the housing stock was nowhere near enough.
"A net increase of 400 homes per year plus the 750 they've promised to community housing providers is not going to make much of a dent in that waiting list," she said.
The government has committed to 1500 new social houses through community housing providers between July 2025 and July 2027.
Lester said the level of housing supply would be insufficient as the coalition government also cracked down on emergency housing.
"I worry about where are those people going to go if the agreements to the motels are ending, and people aren't being tracked when they leave the motels and we're not building on the other side of it, where are people going to go.
"Homelessness is already a problem but it's going to get a lot worse."
According to the latest Census, almost 5000 people around New Zealand were living "without shelter".
Meanwhile, about 14,000 were living in temporary accommodation and almost 94,000 were living in, either a "severely crowded private dwelling" or uninhabitable housing that lacked "one or more basic amenities".
"We need a lot more and we need to keep building," Lester said.
Bishop said the plan would reduce Kāinga Ora's debt by about $1.8b compared to pre-election estimates.
Lester argued that the agency should not be run like a profit-making organisation.
"Housing is one of our key pieces of infrastructure and not just something we have to make a return on," she said.
"Private developers build for profit, public housing providers are building for longevity so they need high quality, durable housing that's built to last.
"If we build too cheaply we pay for it down the line."
The government had tightened the criteria for accessing emergency housing, and introduced a warning system for those who did not meet their obligations while staying in emergency housing.
It also claims to have met its targets of lowering the number of households in emergency housing by 75 percent five years early, although where 20 percent of those who had left remains a mystery.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
