Housing waitlist at record

Increasing rental costs are being blamed for driving more families on to the public housing waitlist, as a record 22,521 wait for a state or social home.

The latest figures, released yesterday by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, show a total gain of 112 households on the list as of December 31.

Among the shifts on and off the list, some 1536 households were added and 740 were housed within the public housing system.

One figure has continued to fall: the number of households receiving emergency housing grants, many staying in motels, dropped by nearly 300 to 5022 households.

This figure peaked in May last year, at 6283, in the immediate aftermath of a country-wide lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But households requiring accommodation support, weekly assistance to cover rent or mortgage payments, has continued to increase, to 378,131 families.

The public housing waitlist has exploded from 6182 households in December 2017. But the growth has slowed in the latest figures, after a gain of 462 households in total in November 2020.

The latest demographic figures, released quarterly, show 52 per cent of the households were single people, 33 per cent sole parents, 9 per cent two or more adults with children, and 6 per cent two or more adults without children.

Ma¯ ori households made up 50 per cent of the waitlist.

The majority, 20,339 households, were deemed ‘‘priority A’’, or most urgently needing a home. There was now a median average wait time of 177 days to receive public housing.

National Party housing spokeswoman Nicola Willis said there had now been 20 months of growth to the housing waitlist, and ‘‘extraordinary’’ growth of more than 7600 households in the past year alone.

‘‘These are people who are being squeezed out of the private sector by high rents, and those high rents are being driven by an underlying shortage of housing.’’

She said it was good to see the number of emergency grants dropping to 5022, though it was ‘‘perplexing’’ as more than 22,000 remained on the waitlist.

‘‘Where are the other 17,000 people on

‘‘Where are the other 17,000 people on the waiting list, where are they being housed?’’

Nicola Willis

National Party housing spokeswoman

the waiting list, where are they being housed?’’

She said the Government had failed to remedy the underlying causes of the housing shortage, and building more state houses was no longer enough.

National would support the Government if it took up the party’s suggestion

to enact emergency legislation, she said, akin to that used to rebuild Christchurch after the devastating earthquake a decade ago.

‘‘We can’t afford to wait for 2024 for Resource Management Act reform to take effect.’’

Associate Minister of Housing Poto Williams, who holds the public housing portfolio, said the Government had encouraged people to come forward to ask for help if they needed a warm, dry home.

‘‘This will be one of the motivating factors behind the modest increase in the register this quarter,’’ the minister said, in a written statement.

The Government had committed billions to building houses after inheriting a crisis that was decades in the making.

‘‘This year we are on track to deliver the goal of 1600 [public housing] places per year by a further 990 . . . By 2024, we will have delivered more than 18,000 places and we remain committed to increasing this.’’