A new housing rights review is accusing the Government of taking Aotearoa backwards on both the right to a decent home and its Te Tiriti o Waitangi commitments, with Māori housing expert Jacqueline Paul warning that Māori-led solutions are being pushed aside.
The Aotearoa New Zealand Human Rights Foundation’s review of housing between 2023 and 2026 finds almost no overall progress has been made towards ensuring everyone has access to a decent home.
The Foundation says there has instead been a shift towards market-led housing policies without the same commitment to embedding human rights and Te Tiriti obligations into government decision-making.
Paul, a Foundation committee member and Māori housing expert, says the consequences are particularly significant for tangata whenua.
The report identifies Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled people and renters among those continuing to experience some of the country’s greatest housing inequalities.
One of Paul’s major concerns is the move away from dedicated funding for Māori-led housing programmes.
The Foundation says replacing dedicated Māori funding with contestable funding forces Māori housing providers to compete against other organisations for resources.
Paul argues that represents a retreat from a Te Tiriti-based approach to housing and is calling for dedicated Māori-led housing funding to be reinstated.
The Foundation also wants tangata whenua involved as partners in housing decisions rather than simply competing for government contracts and funding.
For Māori, the housing challenge extends well beyond the national supply of houses.
It includes the ability to build papakāinga, develop whenua Māori, provide housing for kaumātua and create homes that allow whānau to remain connected to whakapapa, whenua and community.
The Foundation’s report also points to a series of government policies it says have weakened housing rights.
It highlights Budget 2026’s move to increase rents for social housing tenants from 25 percent to 30 percent of their income.
Emergency housing access has also tightened.
According to the report, 33.2 percent of emergency housing applications were declined between October 2025 and March 2026, compared with 4 percent in March 2024.
The Foundation says almost 30 percent of people whose applications were declined received no alternative support.
Kāinga Ora tenancy terminations are another area highlighted.
The review records 74 households losing Kāinga Ora tenancies during 2024/25, compared with none two years earlier, with Māori and Pacific tenants disproportionately affected.
The housing debate becomes even more urgent when the impact on tamariki and rangatahi is considered.
Recent research reported by Te Ao Māori News found more than 33,000 tamariki and rangatahi experiencing severe housing deprivation, with Māori bearing a disproportionate share of the crisis.
Poor or insecure housing can flow into almost every other area of whānau wellbeing.
Overcrowding and damp homes can affect health.
Frequent moves can disrupt education.
High rents can leave less money for kai, electricity and transport.
And homelessness or severe housing deprivation can make almost every other challenge confronting a whānau harder to overcome.
At the heart of the Foundation’s report is a much bigger argument about what housing is actually for.
The review warns that treating housing primarily as a speculative asset has helped entrench inequality.
It argues government should instead measure housing policy against whether people can access homes that are affordable, secure, habitable, accessible and culturally appropriate.
For Paul, that framework also needs to recognise Te Tiriti and rangatiratanga.
The Foundation is calling for stronger accountability mechanisms, including renewed consideration of a housing commissioner overseeing Crown decisions and an independent mechanism where Māori make decisions about Māori housing.
Heading towards Election 2026, housing is therefore shaping up as much more than a debate over how many houses New Zealand can build.
For Māori, the test will also be who gets to design the solutions, who controls the resources and whether whānau can build secure futures on their own whenua and within their own communities.
Because a decent home is not simply another commodity.
It is where tamariki grow, kaumātua are cared for, whakapapa is maintained and whānau build the foundations for the next generation.
And the warning from this latest review is stark — on both housing rights and Te Tiriti, Aotearoa is heading in the wrong direction.
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