Budget 2020 - More public housing to be built

Delivering these extra new homes builds on the Government’s commitment to protecting New Zealand’s most vulnerable people and will stimulate the residential construction sector.

The additional housing places will be delivered by Kāinga Ora, Community Housing Providers and transitional housing providers. Kāinga Ora will finance its proportion of the additional 8000 places by increasing its borrowing over the next 4-5 years, anticipated to be approximately $5 billion. Budget 2020 delivers $570 million of operational funding to enable this build to commence.

This package is in addition to the Government’s existing commitments to provide 6,400 new public houses over the four years from July 2018.

The additional new public housing will be split between approximately 6,000 public housing homes and 2,000 transitional homes.

You can read the Government’s announcement on it's website(external link).

Notes

Public housing

Public housing is targeted at households who cannot access or sustain a tenancy in the private rental market for a range of reasons.  Public houses are owned or leased by Kāinga Ora or by registered Community Housing Providers (CHPs), and can be tenanted by people who are eligible for public housing.

Most tenants in public housing pay income-related rent which limits the amount of rent low-income tenants pay to no more than 25 per cent of their net income. This rental payment is then topped up to a market rent by the Ministry of Social Development’s Income Related Rent Subsidy (IRRS).

Transitional housing

Transitional housing provides warm, dry short-term accommodation housing for people and families who don’t have anywhere to live. It includes support services to help people secure a longer-term home and get back on their feet so that they’re in a stronger position to stay housed.