Behind the headline “$200m boost for new homes” is a sordid tale of a government demolishing state houses, selling most of the land to private property developers and in this case building fewer state houses than were previously there.
Housing Minister Megan Woods says the investment in East Porirua means 186 existing state houses will be demolished to be replaced by just 100 new state houses while most of the land will be sold to private property developers.
Meanwhile we have 25,000 on the state house waiting list, up from just over 5,000 when Labour came to power in 2017.
If a National government was doing this Megan Woods would be raging and demanding the resignation of the minister. If only.
The country desperately needs an industrial-scale state house building programme but Labour is moving in the opposite direction.
An answer to an Official Information Act request reveals the extent of the privatisation of state houses and crown land occurring under this government.
In the last three years Labour has sold $131million in former state house land as well as tens of millions in state houses themselves (this second point will be covered in a subsequent blog)
There are six LSP (Large Scale Projects) being run by Kāinga Ora since 2017 – the six listed in the table below and East Porirua (described in the first two paragraphs of this blog)
The pattern in each LSP is the same. Demolish hundreds of state houses, sell most of the land to private property developers and use the proceeds to build small numbers of new state houses – small in terms of the numbers actually needed.
The government’s plan is, despite the ballooning numbers on the state house waiting list, to keep the total number of state houses at just 3.6% of the total housing stock. And by selling crown land to fund state house building, the government doesn’t have to put in a cent.
In addition to the $131million in land sold so far, hundreds of millions more is in the pipeline.
According to Kāinga Ora the total land involved with these LSPs is 458 hectares with half this land projected to be sold to private property developers – all in prime locations which would be ideal for the large-scale state house building so desperately needed.
I have previously described Labour’s sale of former state house land as the largest privatisation of state assets since the 1990s. The figures bear this out.
At a time when our housing crisis for low and middle-income families has become a catastrophe (the Salvation Army’s word) the government is looking the other way. The state house waiting list has been growing at twice the rate the net number of state houses is increasing. When Labour came to power in 2017 we had 63,315 state houses – as at June this year we have 69,509. An average increase of just over 1200 per year for the 25,000 on the state house waiting list.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.
More to come…
Tragic is almost an understatement.
It’s a pity we have no provision for impeachment in NZ. Or for that matter, the ability to sue the press for not making Government underperformance front page news.
The very same people who are sitting on that waiting list will likely go to the ballot box next year and vote for them without realising what utter b**stards they are.
At least when National screws you, you know they are going to do it.
@Fantail, I agree but it is also a real problem that the lefties who influence government and in the media constantly who said nothing when they announce the plan, have only just clicked on this – I am seriously concerned about critical thinking levels in this country in particular the left! It is like a fog of incompetence and brainwashing – emperors new clothes.
100% Save NZ
the problem is that I think you aquiant the left with Labour. OMG they haven’t been on the left for the last 30 years.
We desperately, urgently need journalism and also independent analysis of actions, effects, human suffering – not sports-commentating a game on a tiny field, as if that field was the whole nation and meaningless parliamentary point-scoring was all that politics was about.
Thank you for persevering, John. Sports reporting does not show the people who are being destroyed by this disgraceful pageant.
Fantail i would disagree that National are transparent on this issue. I don’t think they are any different than Labour. They are all disingenuous on state housing. Labour have just kept using the same target that National did. Sure the list is bigger but if Nat ACT target a higher percentage of stock than they have in the past I will eat my hat ( it’s probably cheaper than food anyway).
Tories/Act haven’t added one house to the state housing stock for more than 25 years. They wont change now – previous Natz/JK housing policy was to invite property speculators in to create a hill-billy rock star economy (words of JK’s hard right Auzzie economist).
Yes I agreed, you know who you are fighting and you know you will be stabbed in the front, but Labour stabs you in the back time and time again.
Welcome to NZ.
But where were the outraged left voices when they first started doing this with the exciting ‘Kiwibuild’ 8 years ago, as it was clear it was a privatisation Thatcher policy implemented by a so called left government and supported by NZ lefties, while the policy was already a huge failure in the UK. Still to come NZ government buy back the houses or rent them at an enormous mark up to what they were previously when they were state owned and struggle to pay going forward.
In the UK
“In 1996, the Ministry of Defence decided to sell off its housing stock. The financier Guy Hands bought it up in a deal that would make his investors billions – and have catastrophic consequences for both the military and the taxpayer” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/apr/25/mod-privatise-military-housing-disaster-guy-hands
Now to 2022, It has been a disaster and the standard of accomodation got worse, because the defence not longer owned the housing assets and the armed families are now suing the UK government!
Army families suing MoD for poor housing told to drop claims or have pay docked
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/13/army-families-suing-mod-for-poor-housing-told-to-drop-claims-or-have-pay-docked
In addition there is nothing wrong with the state houses they are demolishing in NZ, they just need insulation and heat pumps in most cases, maybe a rewire or new plumbing – the old state houses renovated will last a lot longer than the new builds just put up for triple the cost and more when you add in all the free land given away and paying for temporary accomodation for years! Next scandal is that there will be problems and remedial work needed in that space, all covered up, of course. Kainga Ora needed to add more houses to the land themselves.
Not to mention the amount of people who are removed from state housing while waiting for their new build to be built…… kids growing up for 5 years in emergency housing.
You have to wonder how incompetent/compromised these executives are who thought it all up, because when you add in the free land that needs to be rebought, the emergency housing costs for years and the legal and managerial costs – it is costing a fortune for this folly, while removing capital from government.
Panuku board member resigns after collapse of development company
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/118242089/panuku-board-member-resigns-after-collapse-of-development-company
Plans by the Auckland Council controlled Panuku to sell a historic Auckland building to a developer has led to calls for more transparency from councillors
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/99902/plans-auckland-council-controlled-panuku-sell-historic-auckland-building-developer
Kainga Ora Blows Out On Staffing Costs
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2211/S00108/kainga-ora-blows-out-on-staffing-costs.htm
Meanwhile they keep increasing poverty levels in NZ by allowing people to come into NZ on visas and sponsor in their kids and partners for $43k – who are going to need all the cheap housing they can supply and more. Since apparently it costs about $160k for a family to live comfortably in NZ – that’s allowing people to live on 1/3 of what they need! So of course there is endless demand for charities, state and emergency housing, foodbanks and more social welfare as 2/3 of income needs to be found from other sources in NZ such as charity and crime. We have to ask ourselves what happened to the initial 1 million of migrants that came to NZ who were supposed to solve the worker shortages, because they don’t seem to be working in the crap jobs that they replaced the ‘lazy drugged out’ kiwis in, and now it’s even harder to find NZ workers who have given up working whether much touted new migrant or Kiwi.
The opposite, working people are fleeing to OZ so they are not on $43k in NZ.
On that note in the UK – no public consultation on their NHS data – contract designed to be handed to a private intelligence company founded by a Trump supporter.
Health officials confirmed this weekend the proposed £360m new data platform for England will incorporate the NHS shared care records that track patients across the health and care system.
Ministers have disclosed in parliamentary answers that the patient information project does not require a public consultation before the five-year contract is tendered or additional patient consent. They say the project, called a federated data platform, will help improve care and provide new insights into the nation’s health.
Clive Lewis, the Labour MP, said: “This looks like the contract has been set up to hand it to Palantir. There should be a proper debate about the use of this data so people can make an informed choice.”
Campaigners warn the government risks undermining public trust with plans to “shove hospital data” into a private contractor without proper consultation. They say patients have a “legal right to a say”.
What is laughable is that all the Nat Act supporters will rip into Labour for acting like Nat ACT. Labour are saying one thing and it appears doing the opposite, and the main opposition will howl at the wait list but do exactly what is being done now. Why don’t all parties just come clean to the public on why successive governments do the same thing.
Of course they will be out on the streets demanding change. But that is what tribal Labour do. They never ever call their party to account.
What is it with this government? They are now simply taking the piss and are a disgrace!
Labours epitaph on housing will read “FENTON STREET”! That’s it, that’s all they’ve achieved.
Good reporting by the way. Obviously it reads somewhat less flattering than the weapons grade horseshit from Woods or Ardern on the same subject!
Wrong !
There are 25,000 families on the waiting list.
In other words at least 100,000 people.
isnt it written into kainga ora legislation that they have to support a balance of housing, public and private? what they were set up to do. maybe they should give the land back if they dont want it for the purpose of housing.
You do realise cp don’t you, that that is pakeha dominant thinking, Maori should do with the land what pakeha want. In the olden days of true colonialism pakeha brought in a law that Maori had to first, prove that land wanted by settlers was their iwi’s land and second that they were actually using it or it would be designated ‘waste land’ and therefore someone else who had a use for it could have it ie settlers. Ahi kaa came to be a commonly used approach as a result. (Look it up on google and learn some te reo and tikanga as well!)
Eddie Izard showed this process in motion and then what happens when you have to go battle about it using whatever weapons are at hand!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8
Cut of the same cloth, but added in
angst and hand wringing and grimacing about the terrible things….
From the above article: “Housing Minister Megan Woods says the investment in East Porirua means 186 existing state houses will be demolished to be replaced by just 100 new state houses while most of the land will be sold to private property developers.”
Not true. The existing 186 state houses will be replaced with new equivalents, and an additional 100 new state homes will also be built. The public housing stock will be increased by 100 units, private developers will potentially add a further 458 homes.
“‘The combined $340 million investment will enable the delivery of up to 744 new homes on Crown land. This includes replacing 186 old Kāinga Ora homes that are no longer fit for purpose, building an additional 100 public homes, and up to 458 affordable and market homes,’ Megan Woods said.”
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2211/S00079/targeting-hardship-more-funding-to-porirua-development.htm
Thanks CC for getting the crumpled fact sheets straightened out. No use trying to understand a problem from misleading stats.
” to build small numbers of new state houses”
And they are smaller homes. 3 bedrooms replaced by 2 and 1 bedroom apartments and the grassed area not big enough for the kids to play backyard cricket thats if there is any grass at all.
You would think the current Labour govt could follow the example of the first Labour government and finance the build without selling the peoples land.
And if they want to be neo-liberal capitalist about it they could take the advice of the property investors federation, “Never sell land”
Or the experience of Maori which led Dame Whina Cooper to say “not one acre more”
Meanwhile without bothering to use the advantages of economies of scale from a Min of Works paying normal size wages we have Signature Construction and the like making absolute killing$.
It’s not going to be possible to have less than 100,000 state houses at income related rent in the 21st C without hardship consequences.
1. Buy 10,000 properties (while prices are down) – those with room for a small factory/easy/mobile home build addition. Thus 20,000 extra houses asap and later use the money from sales for new builds.
They could be sold as homes with granny flats (there will be a rising demand for these), or as partnership properties for older retirees (mutual care arrangements/including disability).
2. 10,000 factory built or existing homes relocated, or on site new easy/small mobile builds for iwi land (for older Maori to retire to).
this is effing tragic. NZ is a capital captured nightmare. Concerned about the price of everything and knowing the value of nothing. But hey, I’m alright (until some dis-enfranchised outlaw on the run smashes into me).
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