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The Government is counting on Māori and iwi housing providers to fill in some of the gaps in its new public housing plan.
The plan through to 2024 released yesterday is to build another 8000 homes, with the focus on Northland, Hamilton, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Napier, Hastings, Palmerston North and Whanganui.
This will include 6000 public housing places and 2,000 transitional housing places.
Housing Minister Megan Woods says community housing providers and iwi and Māori housing providers will assist where Kāinga Ora can’t deliver, such as in Masterton where the public housing stock was sold off in 1999, or where a targeted housing approach is preferred.
Support will also be given to local councils which have land and plans for new housing.
Housing Minister Megan Woods says the plan is a way to tackle decades of insufficient new housing stock being built and the selling off of thousands of state homes by the previous National Government.
“As this plan outlines, we will focus on building more public and transitional housing in New Zealand’s regions where population growth has significantly exceeded housing, leading to rent rises, housing shortages and deprivation,” she says.
Other housing initiatives include the Housing First Programme for people experiencing chronic homelessness, Progressive Home Ownership to help families buy their own homes, support for first home buyers and the $300m investment into the Homelessness Action Plan.
The Government is also reviewing market settings to provide more help to first home buyers and innovative ideas to increase the supply of affordable homes.
Prime Minister Jacinda Arden says since November 2017 the Government has added 4579 newly built state homes across New Zealand, and it is on track to deliver over 18,000 extra places by 2024.
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