Mana Party policy aims to get more Maori into home ownership

Mana Party leader Hone Harawira. File photo / Doug Sherring

The Mana Party will build homes and offer financial support to get more Maori into home ownership, under a new policy to be launched tomorrow.

A spokesman for leader Hone Harawira said the policy would be specific to the 41 per cent of Maori who have never owned a home.

The spokesman said the party opposed Housing New Zealand's housing renewal programme, which has seen state houses demolished and tenants evicted in Auckland, Napier and Lower Hutt in a bid to create more sustainable, mixed communities of social and private housing.

The policy will be launched in Farmer Cres, Pomare, Lower Hutt where tenants of demolished state houses protested in 2011.

Mr Harawira was arrested during a protest against the demolition of Housing NZ homes in Glen Innes, Auckland.

"Mana remains totally opposed to the Government's urban renewal programme that has seen entire communities of Maori and Pasifika uplifted and evicted from their homes that they have been living in for generations,'' the spokesman said.

"The new homes that are being built are too expensive and are pricing the former tenants from their communities. It is simply a move to destroy low income communities in exchange for expensive housing.''

Statistic New Zealand's 2012 household economic survey showed 41 per cent of Maori own or partly own their home, compared with 69 per cent of non-Maori.

The major parties have already released housing policies.

National has pledged to work with councils to increase the amount of land available for residential purposes and reform resource management law to hasten the processing of building consents.

Labour said it would build 10,000 affordable homes a year through KiwiBuild and introduce a capital gains tax to discourage property speculation.

The Green Party has promoted a shared-equity housing ownership model which will see up to 100,000 homes built in conjunction with Labour's KiwiBuild policy.