New homes shared out

Auckland will get more than half of the 6400 new state and social homes that Housing Minister Phil Twyford won funding for in Budget 2018.

A total of 3550 will be built in Auckland, while more than 700 will go to Wellington.

The rest are spread across New Zealand from Northland to Southland.

Labour campaigned on building 1000 new state homes a year.

Once in Government, Twyford talked up the possibility of getting that number to 2000 a year but failed to get the necessary funding from Budget 2018.

Instead Twyford won enough money to build 1600 state and social housing homes per year for four years – or 6400 by 2022.

These are a mix of standalone homes and units within wider complexes.

This will bring the total number of public housing places to close to 74,000 homes, with almost 34,000 in Auckland.

Budget 2018 allocated just $234 million for the new build but Housing New Zealand has also been allowed to borrow $2.9 billion to

complete the operation.

Twyford said this was the ‘‘biggest build of new public housing that this country has seen for more than a decade’’.

‘‘We know that the single most important thing we can do to reduce homelessness and tackle the housing crisis that we inherited, is to build more housing.

‘‘Modern, warm, dry housing for those who need it most.’’

He noted that the housing crisis was not solely an Auckland problem.

‘‘The regions need public housing as well ... 2850 new state and community provided homes are being built in regional New Zealand and that will make a big difference,’’ Twyford said.

It was possible the number of houses built by 2022 would exceed 6400. ‘‘It’s never enough,’’ Twyford said. ‘‘It’s going to take some years to fix this problem.

‘‘We’ll do our best to exceed these targets.’’

National has criticised the plan; when it was in power it planned to get the number to 72,000 by 2020.

Twyford has contended this plan was not fully funded and inconsistent with the record of that Government, which reduced the net number of homes at one point.

The waitlist of eligible applicants seeking public housing has continued to grow, and was at 8704 as of the end of June, double what it was two years prior.

Over half of the households were in Auckland, and over half were waiting for 77 days or more.

‘‘Public housing is an essential part of helping families and vulnerable people with one of their most basic needs, housing. The waiting list for a state house – now at 8704 – shows the extent of the suffering in our communities,’’ Twyford said.

The state house build is separate from Twyford’s plan to build 100,000 affordable Kiwibuild homes over the next decade.