Samantha Motion: The new age of state housing can't come soon enough

Empty state homes waiting for demolition on Haukore St, Tauranga. Photo / George Novak

OPINION

"We are not going to have people living in slums while there are workmen here capable of building decent houses. We have visions of a new age, an age where people will have beauty as well as space and convenience in and about their homes."

Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand's first Labour Prime Minister, said this in 1936.

It was in the midst of the Great Depression and there were 26,000 Kiwis in need of a proper home.

His vision for a building boom was interrupted by World War II, and he did not live to see it realised after the war when the Government began building tens of thousands of state homes a year.

Much of what's left of that post-war public housing stock today could no longer be called fit-for-purpose.

In 2019, the average age of Kainga Ora's homes was 45. It needed to replace or renew 60 per cent of its 60,000 home portfolio in the next two decades.

It also needed to up overall supply as the public housing wait list rockets (24,500 in June) amid rising homelessness, falling home ownership and property prices increasing much faster than incomes.

The Government's shown a willingness to try and crack this nut, but little aptitude.

Despite promises to emphasise new builds, it has bought far too much of its new stock - $750 million worth in three and a half years.

While one hand of the Government was tweaking tax rules to give first-home buyers a shot in the market madness, the other hand was raised alongside those same buyers in auction rooms.

Kāinga Ora plans to build 37 houses on the corner of Malfroy Rd and Ranolf St, Rotorua. Image / Supplied

It can argue it had to plug the gap left by nine years of National neglect but the fact remains it must build scores more to claim any real advancement.

Much of that building will happen in established neighbourhoods, where it already has the land.

It can knock down clusters of old and unsuitable post-war buildings and redevelop modern, healthy, higher intensity homes in greater numbers.

Neighbourhoods like Haukore St in Hairini, Tauranga where vacant state homes awaiting demolition and redevelopment have attracted thieves and, according to one report, squatters. They're an eyesore but also a sign of the changing times.

In Rotorua, Kainga Ora has a clean slate to work with after buying two hectares of central land on the corner of Malfroy Rd and Ranolf St.

It hopes to start building next year, but the multiple unfruitful prior attempts to develop that 30-year-vacant block privately may herald the challenges ahead, exacerbated by a need for buy-in from a community already feeling burned by its pandemic experience hosting emergency housing and MIQ accommodation.

It's going to be messy and disruptive and challenging for some neighbourhoods but Savage's words ring true again: It's time for a "new age" of state housing.