Housing wait list tops 9000
More than 9000 eligible households are on the waiting list for public housing, up a third on the figure at the end of last year.
Figures released under the Official Information Act to Stuff show that at the end of August, 9344 eligible households were on the waiting list for public housing – state or social houses.
The number climbed from 8704 in June, and 6182 at the end of last year. It has more than doubled since September 2016.
Of the current 9344 on the waiting list, more than 7000 were given the ‘‘A’’ priority, meaning the Ministry of Social Development had classified them as being in the most severe need of housing.
Almost 2000 current public housing tenants are waiting for a transfer to a more suitable home.
Housing Minister Phil Twyford said the rising number on the waiting list was a delayed response to ‘‘year after year of a worsening housing crisis right across the market’’.
‘‘Low income households who are renting are among the most vulnerable.
‘‘And when the housing market goes haywire, it’s these people who are at the sharp end of it. They need public housing,’’ he said.
‘‘The other thing is that our Government has been saying since the day we were elected that we are going to pull out all the stops to support people who need housing, so people know that, they are coming forward.’’
He noted that the Government had actually overshot its goal to build 1500 new emergency and public housing places for winter
2018 but even doing that, it was still paying for more emergency motel stays than ever.
‘‘We’re doing more in this area than ever before . . . And yet we’ve been using more special needs grants than ever before.’’
Twyford said that although house price inflation in Auckland had stabilised, rents did not necessarily stop growing the moment house prices did.
The Government has budgeted for an extra 1600 housing places a year for the next four years.
National housing spokeswoman Judith Collins has repeatedly criticised Twyford for pausing a tenancy review for Housing New Zealand while he worked on new standards, which were released late last month.
Tenancy review is a process whereby Housing New Zealand checks if families still need public housing.
Collins has alleged that the lack of tenancy reviews over that period, along with a more healthbased approach to meth usage on properties, means tenants who don’t deserve a state house are staying in them longer, which is leaving the truly needy to wait longer and longer for housing.
Twyford rejected this argument, saying only a handful of tenancy review evictions were ever happening, even under National.
‘‘The eviction numbers and terminations are negligibly small, and were negligibly small under them, compared to the number of people who move out of public housing into the private rental market of their own accord.’’
Average weekly rents for new tenancies in Auckland peaked at
$569 in May, according to bond data held by the Government.