Strangling Kainga Ora off in Wellington is social housing vandalism
Kāinga Ora’s Arlington development site in Wellington empty despite $48m being spent on it
The site of a once-ambitious public housing development in Wellington promising homes for 900 families continues to sit empty despite $48 million being spent on “preparing the land” for the now-paused project.
Kāinga Ora hit pause on a number of housing projects across the country after a scathing report revealed it was looking to record a $700 million annual deficit in 2026/27.
Construction on the Arlington development was due to be completed between 2023 and 2025, but its future is now uncertain, with nothing built except metal foundations in the ground.
The Government’s decisions from December through to May to clamp down on the pipelines for state-funded building of houses, schools, hospitals, local roads and water networks was a giant blunder so that National could get their privatisation experiment for social housing set up!
Luxon was in Sydney having the audacity to call for bi-pratisian support on infrastructure when his Government has dumped the iRex Ferry deal, dumped light rail, dumped the Onslow Dam and dumped the petrol tax that was generating the money for that Auckland infrastructure. Where does the Prime Minister get off demanding bipartisanship after the Right have shat on everything Labour tried to build?
A survey of 650 builders found the Government’s freezing of funding for Kāinga Ora and local road and water projects had caused a collapse in builder pipelines of work that means they’re now working at barely two-thirds capacity, despite massive housing and infrastructure shortages!
Remember the so called ‘report’ was cooked up over a text between Bill English and Chris Bishop!
Revealed: The simple texts between Sir Bill English and Chris Bishop that led to Kāinga Ora review
Newshub can reveal Sir Bill English was signed on to head a half-million-dollar review of Kāinga Ora through a couple of simple text messages with the Minister – weeks before he even got Cabinet signoff for the review.
Kāinga Ora’s response to the scathing report said they were hardly consulted and Newshub’s obtained text messages showing it was the Minister’s preference they had no involvement.
Billboard duty with Sir Bill and Housing Minister Chris Bishop back in 2017 – six years on, out with the staple guns and in with the calculators. Sir Bill was appointed to undertake a review of Kāinga Ora which, when completed, was highly critical.
“Kāinga Ora is underperforming and not financially viable,” Bishop said.
Newshub can reveal how the former Prime Minister came to head the half-million-dollar probe.
Here is the text exchange:
Sir Bill: Chris will there be a review of KO.
Bishop: We are going to do an independent review into finances, performance, cost, etc. Commence it asap, hopefully get terms of reference and reviewers sorted before Christmas.
Sir Bill: I could help with that.
Bishop: Excellent lets do that.
THEY SPENT $500 000 FROM THE EMERGENCY HOUSING BUDGET TO PUT THIS BULLSHIT TOGETHER!
This is a Government of Landlords, by Landlords, in the interest of Landlords and all it took was a couple of text messages to kill off State Housing.
National screw over first time home buyers by scrapping the $60million so they can afford the $2.9billion for rich landlords and they took from front line housing services to pay for Bill English to do his hit job on Kaianga Ora…
the Government is unapologetic about its tough choices on housing, including paying Sir Bill English to review Kāinga Ora using $500,000 from the fund that pays for transitional housing – urgent accommodation for those who don’t have anywhere else to go.
“I think it was done exceptionally well, exceptionally quickly by three experts at a very reasonable cost,” Luxon said of the review.
But McAnulty said about 80 transitional houses “were sacrificed to pay for the review. It’s… poor”.
…this report has been overseen by fanatcal Catholic fundamentalist and former National Party leader Bill English, who has championed social investment which is a right wing ideological experiment using big data to undermine universalism to fund just the cases that cost the State the most.
ImpactLab is a social investment company that Bill English has founded, is run by his daughter and just had New National MP Emma Chatterton leave them to join the Government.
How the living Christ Bill English can get away with reviewing Kaianga Ora using money for transitional housing, pronounce a massive debt problem and offer his company up as the solution is all a tad beyond me.
Bishop announces no mass sell off of state house, yet next day Luxon refuses to define what ‘mass’ is.
Bishop has a track record of saying one thing and then being unable to back it up.
He claimed a renters rights group loved his plan to allow Landlords to throw you out onto the street but then refused to give anyone the name of that organisation.
He claimed he understood the pain of renters because he was a renter, when asked if he was renting from family, he said no, only for it to turn out he was renting it from his in-laws and he didn’t consider them technically ‘family’.
He has this habit of lying to deflect criticism even when the lies can be easily discovered.
By attacking Kianga Ora, he is manufacturing a housing crisis for the benefit of landlords!
National don’t have $60m for first time home buyers but they do have $2.9b for landlords!
This is what we are now, this is who we is.
We are witnessing a class war but don’t have the political vocabulary to describe it in a country blinded by its egalitarian pretensions.
It takes a stronger stomach than mine to read this all in one sitting. However Double-Dipper English getting half a million for being, IMO, one of the dodgiest little virtue signallers in Parliament, is truly shocking. Halting the Arlington housing project undoubtedly contributed to the closing of the nearby Preston’s Butchery, a good shop selling at competitive prices whence people came from all over Wellington, the cost of supermarket meat being as prohibitive as the punitive cost of electricity, and the quality often dubious.
Where have all the people gone? I only know of one, the alcoholic mother of a Oranga Tamariki survivor. She died quite young. He/she says he misses his/her mum, even though she was violent.
These bastards are, IMO, contributing to societal breakdown, which should discomfit them, but doesn’t.
Ironically, the OT survivor, is ex-St Pat’s Silverstream just like creepy Bill, being sent there by one of his/her foster homes. He’s recently de-transgenderised, volunteered at one of the local charity shops, so perhaps acquired more social responsibility than bludger Bill who, IMO, is as unlikely to give without financial recompense, as Adolf to be welcomed into a synagogue.
A crayfish-eating tobacco lobbyist from Naenae College over-seeing places to call home is a dystopian nightmare.
English. The PM who responded to the sobering report on New Zealand atrocities in Afghanistan by winging his way to Auckland for a pop concert. What a fickle use of taxpayer funding this seemed.
Beyond vile.
Luxon better get a job overseas after he’s bounced out, or he might have to face the treason trial that all his fellow traitors like Roger Douglas deserve.
National did this last time they sold state houses and gentrified them, they sold state housing land to the Chinese airlines and other businesses therefore reducing the social housing stock and they will do again and again. When are dumb Kiwis going get into their fucken heads. And once again Labour built more houses. And now we have National talking about a bipartisan approach bloody hypocrites.
Bishop, whose own father wrote about driving around Wellington looking for a sausage roll, and who I think denied being related to his in-laws. Doesn’t appear to be people sort of person, or even family friendly.
I know a couple of young builders in a provincial town who spent close to $80,000 on sorting plans, consents, and liaising with Kainga Ora and then in the lead-up to the election Kaianga Ora pulled the pin in expectation of new masters. The deal could have been signed off before the election but purposefully wasn’t. The builders looking for work. The land sitting empty. People living in shit holes or under bridges for the next 6-9 years.