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Government officials are looking for private sector partners to launch a "shared equity" scheme to help modest-income families to buy their own houses.
Housing New Zealand officials Heide Pusch and Thomas Parry outlined details of how the long-awaited scheme might work at a social policy conference this week.
They said a similar scheme in Britain had used non-profit housing associations to co-finance 80,000 families into their first homes over the past 20 years.
It aimed to double that to 160,000 families over the next four years by bringing in banks and other for-profit partners.
A spokesman for Housing Minister Chris Carter said the Government wanted banks and other profit-making lenders involved in New Zealand as well and officials had begun talking to them.
The redevelopment of the old Hobsonville air base in West Auckland could provide an initial pilot due to start next year.
Housing NZ is planning for 3000 new houses on the site, with 70 per cent to be sold for private development but 15 per cent reserved for social (state) rental housing and 15 per cent for "affordable" housing such as shared equity.
Mr Parry told the Wellington conference the principle of shared equity was that first-home buyers would pay perhaps only 75 per cent of the price of a house.
The other 25 per cent would be paid for by a partner such as a housing trust or shared, with the housing trust putting up 12.5 per cent and a bank or other private financier putting up the other 12.5 per cent.
The housing trust and the bank would own their share of the house and get their profits from capital gains when the house was sold.
He said the idea worked only in a market with rising house prices. Ms Pusch said four private lenders had agreed to take part in the scheme in Britain, but with a government guarantee and some security over their loans.
Free English lessons for immigrants make sense
A leading sociologist is urging the Government to provide free English language tuition for new immigrants so New Zealand can get the full benefit of their skills.
Professor Paul Spoonley of Massey University's Albany campus told a social policy conference in Wellington this week that both Australia and Canada provided up to 600 hours of English training for new migrants, but New Zealand gave nothing unless migrants paid for it themselves.
English requirements for entry were raised to a high level a few years ago, but other members of a migrant's family might still need language tuition.
Professor Spoonley said the result was that migrants' often high skill levels were not being fully used. In Canada, the lost productivity from the Canadian equivalent of brain surgeons driving taxis had been measured at just over C$2 billion ($2.4 billion) a year.
He said a Massey survey of 376 employers in Waitakere, North Shore and Rodney found that 68 per centsaw language as a negative attributeof immigrants - far ahead of thenext biggest negative factor, the work ethic, named by only 10 per cent of employers.
On the positive side, employers saw immigrants as skilled (24 per cent), with a good work ethic (23 per cent), producing quality work and fitting in with company culture (both 11 per cent).
"The options are quite simple - either you keep increasing the English language requirement on selection, or you do something onshore, and really it depends on what you see as the better investment. I think the best investment is improving their English" Professor Spoonley said.
Canada provided local work experience and free English tuition, recognising that one of the best ways to learn English was in the workplace.
The professor acknowledged that there would be some "leakage" of trained immigrants to Australia once they had learned English.
A group led by Professor Spoonley at Massey and Professor Jacques Poot at Waikato University has been awarded a $5 million grant from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology to study the integration of immigrants over the next five years.
