The Government has yet again failed to do the one thing that needs to happen to ensure houses can be built – commit to ongoing funding, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said.

“Today the Housing Minister announced the findings from a review into Kāinga Ora. His government’s response distracts from the fact they haven’t put any more money up to fund public housing,” Kieran McAnulty said.

“Kāinga Ora and community housing providers are hitting pause on more builds because the Government won’t commit to funding public housing places through the Income Related Rent Subsidy past June 2025.

“Under Chris Bishop’s watch we know that his Government commissioned advice from Treasury that said if no funding is provided post 2025 then Kainga Ora will need to sell 10,200 social houses. Yet we are still waiting for a commitment to more funding.

“In fact, the Housing Minister refused to rule out scaling Kainga Ora back. We have seen this before - the last National government ended up with 1,500 fewer public homes than it started with and sucked out $576 million in dividends.

“Kāinga Ora have paused projects, community housing providers are cancelling projects and building consents are falling rapidly. This impacts families in desperate need of housing as well as local tradies and apprentices who are losing work as a result. All this would have been avoided if the Government committed to ongoing funding.

“The Government has made a lot of promises when it comes to housing, but at the end of the day they’re making things worse. The lack of certainty is stalling the momentum Labour had built in social housing and the construction sector.

“Our Labour Government delivered more than 13,000 public homes, the most each year since the 1950s and one in six homes of New Zealand’s entire public housing stock. National needs to be clear about how it is going to fund the build of more public homes and the ongoing rent support for people in public housing.

“The Government needs to commit to what Labour were going to do and confirm the funding. They didn’t wait for the budget to announce $2.9b tax cut for landlords, so why keep community housing providers and families in need of housing waiting,” Kieran McAnulty said.

© Scoop Media