Housing New Zealand home sits vacant and overgrown for six months as Auckland waiting list hits 3286

An Auckland resident is disappointed to have watched a neighbouring Housing New Zealand home remain vacant for more than six months at a time when thousands are waiting for public housing.

An older woman and her niece had been the previous tenants in the home on Mt Roskill's McCullough Ave, the neighbour told the Herald.

Whereas the former tenants had kept beautiful roses, the garden was now overgrown with grass as high as the windows, a shopping trolley and litter left in the front yard and mail piling up.

The neighbour said she was sure the previous tenants had not contaminated the two-bedroomed duplex on McCullough Ave with methamphetamine or another chemical.

Housing NZ confirmed this, saying the home had remained vacant for so long because it needed extensive remediation work to remove its garage and strengthen it against slipping soil from a hillside.

However, the neighbour remained disappointed the home could not be returned to service faster.

"It is disappointing to see a good house remaining empty for so long given there are meant to be so many people waiting for public housing and we hear people are sleeping in cars," she said.

"The other thing is it is disappointing as a neighbour to see how messy the grounds are and that the lawns have been left to grow."

It comes as 1148 of Housing NZ's 62,863 public and community housing homes across the country remained vacant as of the latest figures from March.

At the same time, 4133 people are either on Auckland's public housing waiting list or waiting to be transferred to a new property. Of those, 3286 are waiting to be put into a state house and the rest are waiting to be transferred to a new property.

The shortage of homes is likely to remain acute in the coming years despite this month's Budget pledge by the Labour-led Government to build about 800 new state homes in Auckland each year for the next four years.

In the case of the McCullough Ave home, a Housing NZ spokesman said the property had been split into two units, and tenants still lived in one unit.

However, the second unit required "extensive remediation work at the back on one side".

"The garage needs to be removed and then hillside restoration and retaining needs to be done. This means this side of the property cannot be inhabited for now," he said.

"We're investigating options for this work and we're awaiting information."

The home was also on a "programme for garden maintenance and this is overdue", he said.

"It will be done shortly (as weather conditions permit)."