Megan Woods: 'We are on track to fix the housing crisis'

Record number of residential building consents for the year to June. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

As Housing Minister I have had the honour of being able to visit some of the many thousands of people and whānau who move into brand new homes built under this Labour Government.

It has been a key priority for us to fix the housing crisis we inherited, and we are making traction.

We are seeing the green shoots of change after making it easier to build new housing and shifting the settings away from speculators and toward first-home buyers. Residential building consents have been at record levels for much of the last year, with more than 50,000 new dwellings consented in the year to June.

The share of first-home buyers has risen to 24.9 per cent in August, just above what it was for last year – and substantially more than the 20.3 per cent it was in 2016 before we came into government.

We know things have been tough for renters; here in Christchurch, the annual rent increase is the second highest in the country at 6.3 per cent.

This compares to Auckland, which has had a building boom of apartments and more affordable housing like duplex housing, with annual rent rises of 2.5 per cent.

The low supply of housing that leads to higher prices has the biggest impact on low-income households; those who simply cannot afford market rents. It is in Labour's DNA to ensure there is a public housing system that supports these people.

That's why we got to immediate work when we came into government to rebuild the public housing system decimated under the National government. National left office with approximately 1500 fewer public housing places and extracted $576 million out of the public housing agency in dividends.

Since we were elected, this government has added another 10,328 public homes, as well as more than 3922 transitional homes to the public housing system.

Here in Canterbury, that means there are another 1704 warm, dry public homes and another 226 transitional homes since we came into government.

I've had the privilege of handing over the keys to previously homeless people feeling the worst of the housing crisis, a place they can call home.

I have seen the excitement of families in new homes that give them the security of being able to properly settle their children into local schooling.

The vast bulk of these is brand new homes built to high energy-efficiency standards, in developments with great community spaces.

Rebuilding the ability of the public housing sector to deliver these homes reflects a deep commitment to righting the wrongs of National's approach to social housing. If National had built public housing at the same rate we are, there would be nearly 23,000 new state houses, accounting for 94 per cent of those on the current waiting list.

We're not only building the newest state housing since the 1970s, but we're also investing in the maintenance of stock to decent standards. This addresses another problem we inherited from National; the deferred maintenance and lack of renewals on housing stock. As anyone will know, the longer a house stays run down, the more expensive it is to fix.

Labour believes everybody deserves to live in a warm, dry home whether they own or rent. We are determined to ensure a healthy public housing sector is restored as a core public service in Aotearoa, New Zealand.