State housing in New Zealand
In excess of 31,000 former state houses exist,[2] which are now privately owned after large-scale sell-offs during recent decades.
[6] Urban working-class housing in New Zealand in the 19th century was of poor quality, with overcrowding, flimsy construction, little public space, often-polluted water, and lack of facilities for disposal of rubbish or effluent.
Local bodies were not interested in enforcing existing regulations, such as minimum street widths, which might have improved housing, or in prosecuting slum landlords.
[7] The Liberal Government, first elected in 1890, believed that the slums would cease to be a problem as workers moved to the country to become farmers or small town merchants.
A parallel idea of making Government-owned land on the outskirts of cities available for workers to create smallholdings failed to gain traction because the cheap commuter trains which might have transported them to their workplaces were not established, and the Government did not provide loans for building or allow the purchase of freehold land in the areas.
The bill passed by 64 votes to 2, despite criticism over the cost of the scheme, the distance the houses would be from workplaces, particularly ports, and the lack of provision for Māori.
[14] The Government was forced to allow weekly tenancies and to raise the maximum income level[b][15] to attract families to the houses.
Houses built in the central suburbs, such as the eight in Newtown and twelve in Sydenham, attracted tenants much more readily.
It nationalised the Mortgage Corporation set up in 1935 by the Coalition Government to provide low-interest housing loans.
[21] MP John A. Lee was responsible for the programme (and for the use of cheap Reserve Bank 1% credit), but as he was an undersecretary rather than a minister he had limited authority.
[24] Almost all of the state houses built by the Labour Government were detached, with some land on which vegetables could be grown and perhaps a few animals kept.
For the opening of the first state house in each major city, a group of cabinet ministers repeated this ceremony.
[26] The first tenants, David and Mary McGregor, paid £1 10s 3d ($3.03) rent for 12 Fife Lane, about one-third of their £4 7s 9d ($8.78) weekly income.
House building could not keep up with the demand and almost stopped in 1942 as resources were reallocated to meet the needs of the war effort.
The Government set up transit camps to provide interim accommodation for families waiting for state houses.
[29] In 1944, the Department of Native Affairs produced a report on the poor housing conditions of Māori in the Auckland suburb of Panmure.
A rare exception to the interspersal policy was in Waiwhetu in Lower Hutt, where state houses were built around a central marae.
Roofs were typically hip or gable with a steep pitch (30 degrees), and were clad with concrete or clay tiles, or asbestos-cement sheets.
Houses were more uniform in design than individual, and there was a large increase in the proportion of duplex and multi-unit dwellings.
[43] In 1991 the Fourth National Government raised state house rentals to "market levels" amid much controversy.
[45][46] In response, in 1996 the Government increased the accommodation supplement to 70 percent, and restored the idea of "social objectives" rather than profit for the Housing Corporation.
[48] However protests continued, culminating in the high profile eviction of a SHAC rent striker during the 1999 election campaign.
[49] The Fifth Labour Government, elected in 1999, placed a moratorium on state house sales and re-established the income-related rents.
[52] Rents were limited to 25 percent of net household income for tenants earning up to the rate of New Zealand Superannuation.
In 2011, in the Auckland suburb of Glen Innes Housing New Zealand began a redevelopment process of 156 state properties.
[54] The redevelopment process sparked over two years of protests and scores of arrests, including of Mana Party leader Hone Harawira.
The Ministry has listed pressures in the private rental market, population growth and decline in home ownership as key factors.
[60] In 2019, the Government combined KiwiBuild, Housing New Zealand and HLC into one new unit called Kāinga Ora.
[61] In mid-March 2024, Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Finance Minister Nicola Willis ordered Kāinga Ora to end the previous Labour Government's "Sustainable Tenancies Framework" and take disciplinary action against unruly tenants and those with overdue rent.
By contrast, ACT Party leader David Seymour and Manurewa-Papakura Ward Councillor Daniel Newman welcomed the eviction of unruly state housing tenants.
