Kāinga Ora has built 16 houses in three years in Tauranga. Photo / File
Kāinga Ora has built just 16 new public houses in Tauranga in three years, with a local building company boss putting the slow progress down to "red tape" and a lack of developable land.
Figures provided to the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend under the Official Information Act showed that, in addition to the 16 new builds the agency added in Tauranga, seven homes in the Western Bay were added through redevelopments.
When the agency - then called Housing New Zealand - released its public housing plan for 2018-2022, it planned to add 100 new housing places in Tauranga and 30 in the Western Bay by June 2022.
In an August 2018 press release, then-Housing Minister Phil Twyford said the overall 275 extra public houses planned for the Bay of Plenty region would be "new homes built over the next four years".
The plan itself said there would be an "emphasis on new builds", which were expected to form a "significant majority of the additional supply".
But the agency has done a lot more buying than it has building.
Between 2018 and 2021, Kāinga Ora purchased 55 houses in Tauranga and none in the Western Bay, according to the data released.
A local building boss said Kāinga Ora was never going to be able to meet its new-build expectations. The agency declined to comment when pressed on whether it would meet the 100-home target.
Classic Builders director Peter Cooney said a house took 14 to 16 weeks to build but issues and delays could arise from consents, plans, finding available land, and site inspections.
"There's so much red-tape ... Kāinga Ora was never going to meet its requirements in this environment when the normal building industry isn't meeting the demand."
He said the shortfall highlighted the lack of sections and available land and was directly linked to a lack of planning and infrastructure spend in previous years.
"We all knew it was coming and basically, D-Day is here. Reality has hit home and everyone's scrambling to find enough land to build houses for the sheer demand that's out there."
He said the Resource Management Act was outdated and creating "piles of bureaucratic paperwork" and causing economic harm, and fast-tracked consenting processes and infrastructure were the only way to combat the shortage.
"Planning needs to be 30 to 50 years ahead of time, not five to seven years."
He said councils, Government, and developers needed to work collaboratively to solve infrastructure funding.
Johnny Calley of Calley Homes Tauranga, and Master Builders' national vice president, said builders in the region built between 100 and 300 houses a year.
"With the financial resource at Kāinga Ora's disposal, I would have expected more homes to be built."
He said it would be "challenging" for the Government to meet its expectations by next year given the time and barriers.
Tauranga Housing Advocacy Trust lawyer Shard Loibl said the lack of social housing builds was both unacceptable and "very depressing and disappointing" given the level of need in the city.
Te Tuinga Whanau Social Services executive director Tommy Wilson said it "doesn't even come close" to the number of people under the trust's care now, let alone the number of people it helped in the past few years.
"The whole system is, dare I say it, constipated ... and the laxative is land."
Wilson believed solutions would be found by freeing up Māori land and using community providers to fast-track initiatives for more housing solutions.
According to Trade Me's latest figures, average rents in Tauranga are $575.
There were 753 people on the waiting list for public housing in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty, according the Ministry of Social Development's housing register, which showed demand for 390 one-bedrooms and 222 two-bedroom homes.
Most of Tauranga's housing stock is owned by Accessible Properties, which took it over from the National Government in 2017.
The housing provider has 1179 homes in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty, up 41 since it took over the stock.
Under its current contract with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, it needs to add 150 houses to its stock by 2027.
Chief executive Greg Orchard said there was potential to provide up to another 1500 homes from larger redevelopments and about 150 from infill sites not suited to larger developments.
He said the provider was in talks with the Government about how to unlock this potential.
Tauranga City Council commissioner Stephen Selwood said the council's Long-term Plan 2021-31 aimed to fund the infrastructure needed to open land supply into the future.
"It's taken us decades to get to this point, let's hope it doesn't take decades to turn it around."
Average residential rates rises of 15 per cent - 33 per cent for commercial ratepayers - for 2021-22 would contribute towards this.
He said a "considerable" portion of the investment would go to increasing staff capacity and capability across the consent and regulatory department to speed up application processing, he said.
This, combined with the Government's RMA reforms and power to fast-track land development, should allow the council to open up land for housing supply, he said.
He said the council's hands were tied when it came to the RMA and Building Act, but it could ask the Environment Minister to fast-track consenting processes if land was lined up and infrastructure ready.
"If we don't provide infrastructure in a timely way, land supply is constrained, house prices go up and we all suffer."
A Ministry of Housing and Urban Development spokesman said addressing decades of under-investment in housing wouldn't be achieved overnight, and needed the commitment of many stakeholders.
He said the 2018 public housing plan, and the next version released earlier this year, would deliver 650 additional public housing places in the Bay of Plenty region by July 2024.
A $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund announced by the Government in March included a Kāinga Ora Land Programme to increase build-ready land supply.
The fund set aside $350m to enable infrastructure for Māori Housing, alongside Whai Kāinga Whai Oranga's commitment of $380m over four years.
Kāinga Ora was also intensifying its efforts in the region to identify opportunities to build new housing to provide more permanent homes, he said.
When asked if Kāinga Ora would fail to deliver on its housing promised, Kāinga Ora Bay of Plenty regional director Darren Toy said it had a land acquisition programme to allow delivery of more homes.
He said it recognised the pressure, and a range of options to up the housing supply were being looked into. These included redeveloping older properties, partnering with other landowners, and buying land.
He said the agency worked with councils around necessary infrastructure and site-specific requirements to build homes, drawing "expertise and experience" unlocking and developing land for public housing.
- Significant land development in Tauriko West to deliver an estimated 3000 to 4000 new homes from 2024-25.
- $100m Pāpāmoa Eastern Interchange project could help unlock 3000 homes, development at Te Tumu will follow on with the potential for 8000 homes.
- Te Papa peninsula intensification, supported by increasing Cameron Rd capacity and improving transport options, along with Plan Change 26 making it easier to build more compact types of housing.
He founded Kiwi Can in Ōpōtiki and Tauranga, reaching over 3700 youth weekly.