Resetting Kāinga Ora
Kāinga Ora is resetting its focus so it can better serve tenants and communities and leave a sustainable social housing legacy for future generations.
Why change is needed
Kāinga Ora was established in 2019 to replace Housing New Zealand as the country’s largest social housing provider. Since then, its mandate has been expanded to incorporate non-core functions like large land purchases, complex urban development projects and shared equity schemes, all of which have stretched the organisation’s resources and attention.
We have delivered thousands of new homes in a short period of time, but high levels of inflation, rising interest rates, and increasingly complex mandates, coupled with high organisational overheads, have made our operating and commercial model unsustainable.
We need to reset to improve our financial sustainability and to bring our focus back to our core mission. Our new plan for Kāinga Ora is intended to keep us focused on being a good landlord who looks after its tenants, a good neighbour who engages well with the community, and a fair, rational and common-sense developer who spends money wisely to get the right housing to the people who need it.
Our Board will be closely monitoring implementation of the plan and will provide regular progress reports to the government.
Refocusing on our core mission
We’re refocusing on our core mission of providing and managing state-owned social housing in a financially sustainable way.
We’re going back to basics and concentrating our resources on being a responsible landlord who looks after our homes and tenants and serves communities well.
We are currently working on identifying the best value for money approach to continuing our six large scale urban development projects. But, over time, we will scale back or transfer other work that we’ve picked up in recent years that doesn’t fit within our core business (such as large-scale land purchases, industry innovation and affordable housing).
Improved tenancy management
We’re improving our tenancy management and using the Residential Tenancies Act more to get better outcomes for both our tenants and our communities.
We’re a social housing landlord and we need to support tenants when they’re going through tough times. But we’re making it clear to our tenants rent must be paid and they must treat their neighbours with respect. If they don’t meet either of those obligations, their tenancy will be at risk.
Our tenants’ needs vary. And they can change over time. A key part of our reset will be ensuring tenants are in the right type of home, at the right time, with the right support in place.
Managing build costs and improving our housing portfolio
We’re going to continue to deliver new social housing – to either add to the state housing stock in places where more homes are needed, or to replace existing homes that have reached the end of their life.
Over the two years to 30 June 2026, we will be adding 2,650 homes to the state housing stock, increasing the total number of state houses throughout New Zealand to around 78,000, as well as renewing almost 3,000 homes.
We have a backlog of poor quality, older homes that are expensive to maintain and can lead to poor health outcomes for tenants. Our goal is to complete 11,500 renewals by the 2030 financial year and renew all pre-1986 homes within 30 years.
We’re going to achieve greater savings in how we build. We are optimising our housing designs and standards so that we can significantly reduce costs. The new homes we deliver will be in line with the market.
Keeping our internal costs down
We are driving down costs throughout the business and taking a more disciplined approach to spending.
We’re working to right-size the organisation, lift performance, and ensure we get value for money for every dollar spent.
We're going to achieve significant savings through changing the way we manage the maintenance of our homes, while ensuring they remain warm and dry.
Improved financial sustainability
Our financial sustainability will improve considerably as key cost-saving initiatives are embedded.
Kāinga Ora will continue to perform its functions and deliver the new housing and renew its older stock while remaining under the $22.9 billion cap. Debt-to-assets is expected to peak at 37% in 2025, which compares favourably with other infrastructure entities. After 2025, debt to assets will begin to decrease year-on-year.
We’re revising our Investment Management Framework to reflect our focus on managing and renewing our existing housing portfolio.
To reduce debt over time, we will look to sell surplus land that no longer meets our core objectives. Through selling vacant land that is surplus to requirements, Kāinga Ora is also providing an opportunity for the market to deliver new housing.
Frequently asked questions
Cabinet has agreed that residual KiwiBuild underwrite activity will be transferred to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, administration of the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund will transfer to the new National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Agency and the Kāinga Ora Land Programme will be wound down.
We are currently working on identifying the best value for money approach to continuing our six large scale urban development projects.
We will continue to deliver quality new homes that meet building code and provide warm, healthy housing. Kāinga Ora house designs have differed from private developers as we deliver a diverse type of homes to meet our requirements as a social housing landlord. These include standalone homes, duplexes and apartment buildings. We will optimise our housing designs and standards so that we can significantly reduce costs while continuing to deliver quality, warm, dry homes.
As a social housing landlord, our costs have differed compared to a private developer for many reasons. Namely, we’re redeveloping homes on our existing sites, many of which are 50, 60+ years old which means higher civils and infrastructure costs with the land. Community engagement and consultation and exceeding legislative requirements relating to environmental outcomes all adds to the cost.
We are transforming how we plan and deliver asset management and maintenance with a focus on cost-savings and ensuring processes are efficient. It’s not about cutting levels of service - it’s about doing the right work at the right time for both our tenants and across our assets. We are developing new systems and controls which provide much improved planning and scheduling of maintenance and retrofit work. Greater efficiency in how we complete this work, and reducing the cost of it, will contribute to increased savings.
Kāinga Ora is committed to being a good landlord and most of our tenants are responsible and treat their neighbours with respect. On 1 July 2024 we made changes to strengthen our response to disruptive behaviour and have a range of tools in place to support this.
Our new, strengthened approach is about being firm, but fair and is designed to strike the right balance between our responsibilities to our tenants – some of whom experience a range of challenges – and ensuring the quiet enjoyment of others in the community.
When disruptive behaviour occurs, we still work to understand what’s driving behaviour and refer customers to specialist services to address underlying issues if needed. We also use the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) to drive behaviour change and provide a clear deterrent for disruptive behaviour – and are doing this more frequently than we have in the past. If behaviour does not change, we will end tenancies when we need to.
Read more on our approach to disruptive behaviour.
In meeting our core mission, Māori interests and stakeholders will remain a high priority for Kāinga Ora given Māori represent a disproportionate number of our tenants. Iwi and other Māori entities will also remain valued partners both in land and housing development and in the provision of tenant support services.
Through our Te Kurutao Group, Kāinga Ora will continue to work with identified Māori and iwi entities at a national and regional level to enable better social housing outcomes for them.
From June 2026, our housing portfolio will remain at the level of around 78,000 homes. This is an increase of 12,000 homes since 2020. To address the significant renewal backlog of poor quality, end-of-life homes that are expensive to maintain and drive poor tenant outcomes, we will renew around 11,500 homes by mid-2030. This approach will better align homes with the changing profile of Kāinga Ora tenants while also ensuring the renewal work is financially sustainable.
A major part of our plan is successfully implementing, and maintaining ongoing savings across the agency over time, but not at the expense of quality or responsiveness with the services and support provided and the agency’s key functions. We’ll achieve these savings by focussing on being more efficient and reducing costs with how we maintain and retrofit our homes and through our Housing Delivery System. Alongside this we have other initiatives that will reduce our operational expenditure.
Page updated: 4 February 2025