Rampant gun violence is among the reasons 64,000 public housing tenants feel unsafe, a Parliamentary committee heard this morning.
Kāinga Ora chief executive Andrew McKenzie said Auckland's firearms crime meant his agency had to be careful at times about where to send its employees.
National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis had asked about tenant perceptions of safety.
Willis said Kāinga Ora's own numbers showed 32 per cent of tenants, or 64,000 people, did not feel safe at home.
"It shows that your numbers are worse than last year, in terms of people's feelings of safety," Willis told McKenzie.
"I'd guess we have to look behind the numbers as to why people don't feel safe in their home," McKenzie replied.
"Living up here in Auckland and particularly with the level of gun-related violence - there's certainly a fear in the community."
Dozens of people were hospitalised across Auckland last year with gunshot wounds.
Some of the violence has been attributed to gang turf wars, including violence linked to competition in the methamphetamine trade.
On Sunday, gunshots were reportedly fired about 100m from Shooters Saloon in Kingsland around the same time as a mass brawl.
Kāinga Ora has also faced pressure in recent months from WIllis over antisocial tenants, such as one who allegedly threatened to kill an 82-year-old neighbour.
McKenzie said simply evicting such tenants would not be beneficial for society, and would create more problems for other agencies.
"The addiction people said to us: forget about it, you make them homeless, it's a waste of time."
Last week, it was revealed Kāinga Ora had changed its complaints process.
RNZ said Associate Housing Minister Poto Williams gave Kāinga Ora the ability to use a "three strikes"' complaints scheme, provided for in the Residential Tenancies Act.
Kāinga Ora chairman Vui Mark Gosche today said the scale of the problem was complex.
"The wider community is something we don't have control over," Gosche said. "We are dealing with people that no one else will house."
He told Parliament's social services and community committee that MPs also had to try improve the situation.
"The dilemma that we face as an organisation is not an easy one."
Gosche said New Zealand could not tolerate the mass homelessness that would result from widespread evictions.
"Where do they go? And that's something we don't have the answer to, but Parliament's going to have to find."
McKenzie said 82 per cent of Kāinga Ora of customers were happy with the service provided.
He also said some antisocial tenant behaviour was not serious enough to warrant criminal charges.
"They haven't crossed the threshold where the justice system says to them: 'you need to be removed from the community'."
And he said sometimes tenants were blamed for the bad behaviour of associates or hangers-on.
McKenzie said maintenance was another challenge for the agency because requests for assistance plummeted when Covid-19 lockdowns were activated.
"When we get out of it, the contractors can come back in."
Earlier, Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) chief executive Andrew Crisp said Covid-19 and global interest rate situations were putting pressure on rental markets.
The imbalance between rental housing supply and demand was the most critical thing to address, he said.
Price increases varied nationwide, he told the committee.
"It is quite different in different parts of the country. It is moderate increases in, say for example, Auckland."
HUD deputy chief executive Brad Ward said eastern Porirua, north of Wellington, had some of the highest recent rental price increases.
Ward said this was mostly because for decades, there had been very limited new housing supply in the area.
Motorists are being warned to expect hazardous driving conditions.