Housing NZ: 'Cash is not the problem'

File photo / Paul Estcourt

Housing New Zealand told MPs this morning it could not build state houses any faster even if it was given a blank cheque.

The corporation's bosses told a Parliamentary select committee it was now on track to complete 2000 new state houses in two years - a target set by Government in 2013.

But Opposition MPs on the committee pointed to the "unmet demand" of at least 5000 people and questioned whether Housing New Zealand could be doing more.

Labour's housing spokesman Phil Twyford asked whether the $550 million in dividends taken from Housing New Zealand by Government since 2008 could have been used to expand its stock.

HNZ chief executive Glen Sowry said a large-scale building programme was underway and there was no capacity to expand it further.

"Cash is not the problem for us," he said.

"We have sufficient capital on our balance sheet to be able to support those developments... It's actually getting human and construction resource at the scale that it needs to be.

Mr Sowry said the construction industry and developers already faced huge demand for new builds in Auckland and Christchurch.

Asked about the two-year target set by Government, he said Housing New Zealand was "fully confident" that the 2000 new homes would be "either finished or close to being finished or well under construction" by the end of 2015.

Although only 500 homes had been built by the corporation in the last year, he expected the rate of building to gather momentum and more than 1000 would be built this year.

Mr Sowry said this was a significant achievement, especially given Housing New Zealand was only building 100 to 200 houses a year during the global financial crisis.

The "unmet demand" for state houses in New Zealand is currently just under 5000 people.

This was not an exhaustive list of all people seeking state houses, but a register of those categorised as "at risk" or in "serious need".

Under a major policy outlined last month by Prime Minister John Key, Housing New Zealand planned to sell 8000 state houses to community providers over the next four years.

HNZ bosses could not answer questions from the committee about how many properties the corporation expected to own in ten years' time.

Mr Twyford was disappointed that the corporation had been "left in the dark" about the major policy and did not know "the most basic things" about it.

He said in a statement: "The policy is so shambolic and so full of holes that the $18 billion government entity is left rudderless."