Media resources
Use our fact sheets, explainers and other online resources to help shape your news stories.
Factsheets
- The core mission of Kāinga Ora is to manage and provide state-owned social housing.
- We are the country’s largest social housing landlord, with over 75,000 properties providing homes to about 191,000 New Zealanders.
- Tamariki (children) and rangatahi (young people) make up about 40% of the people living in Kāinga Ora homes.
- More than 97% of Kāinga Ora tenants are on low incomes and qualify for income-related rent.
- About 3,850 Kāinga Ora houses across the country are operated by more than 230 specialist Supported Housing Providers, either as Transitional Housing or Community Group Housing.
- Kāinga Ora builds additional social homes based on government direction, which tells us how many houses are needed and where they are needed.
- Over the two years to 30 June 2026, we will be adding 2,650 homes to our housing stock, bringing the total number of Kāinga Ora homes throughout New Zealand to around 78,000. We will do this through:
- removing old Kāinga Ora houses and redeveloping on the land
- working with construction firms to build houses
- buying completed homes from developers
- Kāinga Ora also has a focus on renewing existing homes to make sure our homes are in the right location and are suitable for the people that need them. We renew our homes through:
- renovating them through our retrofit programme, adding at least 50 years to their life
- removing homes and redeveloping on the same land
- selling the house and the land and replacing it with a new warm, dry home elsewhere
- Our focus on renewals means Kāinga Ora will strategically sell some social homes or land it owns. When we do this, we are not reducing the overall number of social homes. For each Kāinga Ora home we sell, we deliver a newly built social home elsewhere.
More information
How is eligibility for social housing determined?
- Eligibility and priority for social housing is determined by the Social Allocation System administered by the Ministry of Social Development(external link) (MSD) based on need.
- MSD’s role is to assess and prioritise housing need and share the details of suitable applicants with social housing providers as homes become available.
What role does Kāinga Ora play?
- As a social housing landlord, the role of Kāinga Ora is to provide housing to those determined by the Social Allocation System to have the greatest housing need.
- When a Kāinga Ora home becomes available, MSD provides Kāinga Ora with the details of individuals and whānau from the Housing Register* whose housing and location needs match the property.
- Kāinga Ora then assesses this information, alongside any additional information gathered through conversations with applicants, to select the individual or whānau that is best suited to the home and community.
- Our placement process typically includes a detailed pre-housing conversation with the applicant to ascertain their needs, reviewing available properties, liaising with support services and other agencies if required, and having prospective tenants view the property.
*Media queries about the Housing Register should be directed to media@msd.govt.nz.
How much rent do Kāinga Ora tenants pay?
- Most of our tenants pay an income-related rent determined by the Ministry of Social Development, with the amount generally set at 25% of their net income.
- The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development pays the income-related rent subsidy to Kāinga Ora to cover the balance between the tenant’s rental payment and the market rent for the property.
- The market rent is set according to comparable rent charged for other properties of a similar type, size, and location.
More information
How do you deal with serious disruptive behaviour?
- Our job is to provide tenants with a stable home for as long as they need it. In return, we expect them to be good tenants and neighbours.
- On 1 July 2024 we implemented a new approach to managing tenancies and strengthened our response to disruptive behaviour.
- Our approach is about being fair but firm. When disruptive behaviour occurs, we work to understand what’s driving behaviour and refer tenants to specialist social and health services to address underlying issues if needed. Alongside this, we are also making earlier and more frequent use of the tools available under the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) to drive behaviour change and provide a clear deterrent for disruptive behaviour.
- If behaviour does not change, we will end tenancies when we need to and not offer the tenant another home.
- Our approach is designed to provide a clear deterrent for disruptive behaviour and encourage behaviour change through making effective use of the tools available to us under the RTA.
What RTA tools do you use?
- We can make it clear to tenants that their behaviour is unacceptable, and their tenancy is at risk by issuing a Section 55A notice under the RTA. If a tenant receives three Section 55A notices within a 90-day period, then we can and will apply to the Tenancy Tribunal to end their tenancy.
- There are specific requirements in the RTA that must be met in order to issue a notice. This includes ensuring there is evidence of the disruptive behaviour and that the behaviour can be clearly linked to either the tenant or someone at the home with their permission.
- In limited situations that are severe, persistent or threatening, or where a tenant’s behaviour significantly breaches their tenancy agreement, we can and will apply to the Tenancy Tribunal to end a tenancy under section 55 or Section 56 of the RTA and not provide the tenant with another Kāinga Ora home.
- Data on our use of the RTA tools is published regularly on our website.
What is the difference between ending a tenancy and eviction?
- Eviction is a specific process involving the Tenancy Tribunal and District Court which only happens if a person refuses to leave the property after their tenancy has ended.
- In almost all situations, Kāinga Ora can resolve a situation without needing to resort to eviction.
More information
- Most Kāinga Ora tenants – almost 90% – pay their rent on time and are up to date with their rent payments. When tenants do fall behind on their rent, we work quickly to address it and help get them back on track.
- In February 2025, Kāinga Ora announced changes to its approach to managing rent debt to speed up repayment and address historic issues.
- We are focused on reducing rent debt by taking a firmer approach with tenants who are behind on their rent. We will be fair and reasonable – but rent must be paid.
- Kāinga Ora will continue to support tenants who fall behind on their rent and are making genuine efforts to get back on track with what they owe. This includes working with tenants to understand and resolve the root causes of the debt and get a reasonable repayment arrangement in place. Kāinga Ora also refers tenants to specialist financial and budgeting support services where possible – and where the tenant agrees.
- We are taking firmer action with tenants who regularly skip payments and refuse to work with us. In those cases, we will take steps to end the tenancy.
- Our new approach seeks to ensure that tenants will not have accumulated more than 12 weeks’ worth of rent debt when their tenancy is ended. This means we will begin the process of ending a tenancy earlier than in the past.
Partial rent debt forgiveness
- A small number of Kāinga Ora tenants – less than 3% – accumulated more than 12 weeks’ worth of debt before our new rent debt policy was introduced.
- There are a range of reasons for this, including social and economic events over the past five years and the steps Kāinga Ora took to respond to government policy, particularly during the pandemic.
- Kāinga Ora is taking a pragmatic approach to helping these tenants with significant rent debt get on top of what they owe faster by reducing the amount owed down to 12 weeks’ worth of rent. This is an amount that is more realistic for tenants to repay in full, with the right payment arrangement in place.
- Tenants will only be eligible to receive this reduction if they had more than 12 weeks’ worth of rent debt at the start of February 2025, are consistently paying their rent and making reasonable payments to reduce what they owe. In return for this one-off help, tenants must continue reducing their debt.
- This provides a clear incentive to tenants who are not currently meeting their obligations to change their behaviour and speed up repaying what they owe. If they consistently do this, they will be eligible to have part of their rent debt forgiven. But if they do not, we will take steps to end their tenancy.
More information
Why are you selling some homes?
- As the owner of nearly 75,000 properties, it’s important Kāinga Ora takes a strategic approach to managing our portfolio. This means continually working to improve the quality of our housing stock and delivering the right housing to the people that need it. Some of our existing homes are no longer suitable for our tenants and have reached the end of their life as social housing. It makes economic sense to sell these homes and use the proceeds to build new ones that are warmer and drier, the right size and in the right locations.
- We intend to sell approximately 900 homes over the next 12-18 months – representing around one percent of our current portfolio. These homes will be in regions across the country. Decisions to sell specific sites will be ongoing, and at any one time there will be properties at various stages of the process.
- It’s important to note we are not reducing the number of Kāinga Ora homes. For each existing Kāinga Ora home sold, a newly built home is delivered elsewhere.
- A range of properties are being considered for sale, based on age, location, value and regional housing needs. Many will be older houses which no longer meet the needs of our tenants. The sale of these homes will fund the construction of newly built homes which are warmer, drier and in the right locations. Others may be homes in high value areas. In this instance it makes sense to sell one high-value property and use the proceeds to build multiple new ones in areas of greatest need.
- We estimate total sales proceeds of around $400-$500m per annum, which will be redirected toward new replacement homes.
- If there are tenants living in a home we plan to sell, we will support them to move to another Kāinga Ora home, carefully considering their needs in matching them to a home and community.
Are you also going to sell some land?
- We will sell some land that is no longer needed for social housing or our urban development work. Identification of land for sale will be ongoing, as we determine which sites should be retained for potential development later and which ones could be sold.
- Generally, as sites are confirmed for sale they will be listed and sold on the open market by an appointed real estate agent. Larger development sites may require different sale approaches which could include direct to developers and build partners in a similar way as the plots of land in our large-scale urban development projects are. Where sites are subject to First Right of Refusal, we will meet our Treaty obligations and provide iwi with the first opportunity to acquire those sites.
- Proceeds from the sale of land will either be reinvested in our housing stock or used to reduce debt.
More information
Explainers and editorials
Simon Moutter, Board Chair, Kāinga Ora
Our country has a proud history of providing social housing for New Zealanders in need.
Nearly every New Zealander, me included, will have a personal story of the important role social housing has played, either for themselves or someone they know.
But the need for social housing is not necessarily a ‘problem’ to be outsourced solely to the government or social housing providers to solve. It touches all of us.
This is why, when Housing Minister Chris Bishop called me last year to ask if I could contribute to creating a more sustainable, more efficient and more effective Kāinga Ora, I agreed to bring my business turnaround experience to bear on the challenge.
As a newcomer to public sector governance, it’s been a real eye-opener to see the difference between the perceptions of Kāinga Ora (and the tenants we house and support) and the organisation’s realities.
From everything I’ve seen, Kāinga Ora is full of passionate New Zealanders supporting other New Zealanders. I can say with confidence they genuinely care about people in need and want to do the best they can for tenants and the taxpayer. I acknowledge there’s a very small number of tenants that cause serious disruption for their neighbours and that’s completely unacceptable.
We are moving more swiftly and taking firmer action to address this, and manage rent debt, but these situations often play out publicly to help satisfy daily news, social media and talkback cycles and contribute to negative public perceptions of Kāinga Ora and our tenants.
Communities need to be more supportive of people in social housing and, we need to change some of the rhetoric around Kāinga Ora tenants.
The fact is, the vast majority of Kāinga Ora tenants are everyday New Zealanders who just struggle financially, lack family support or suffer from conditions which limit their ability to live well independently.
There are also limits to what Kāinga Ora can do in its role as a landlord.
Kāinga Ora must take tenants in priority order from the Ministry of Social Development’s Housing Register and is on the same legal footing as any other landlord, meaning we don’t have any special powers to “control’' tenants or choose who we give tenancies to.
We must act within the rules of the Residential Tenancies Act, like all other landlords.
That said, we know we must do better as a landlord, neighbour and publicly funded organisation and improve how we deliver new homes and maintain our housing stock.
To achieve this, Kāinga Ora is resetting to better serve New Zealand communities.
By getting back to basics on our core social housing mission, we will improve our ability to provide safe, warm, dry and affordable homes and be a good, supportive landlord for New Zealanders in need; while ensuring we can sustainably invest in social housing well into the future.
The plan outlines how we’ll improve our housing portfolio by efficiently and cost-effectively renewing and maintaining our older state homes as well as better matching housing to tenant needs.
Internally we’re improving the organisation’s performance, with a focus on cost-effectiveness and ensuring value for money.
As key operating improvement initiatives are embedded, Kāinga Ora’s financial sustainability will significantly improve.
We are committed to playing our part. But it’s not all on social housing providers to address this wider societal need.
We all have a part to play.
So, on that note, I ask, respectfully, that New Zealanders reconsider their attitude to social housing providers and to the people who live in the houses we provide.
The need for social housing in New Zealand to support those who can’t live independently without help is a societal problem.
It will not be addressed by wishing it away, ignoring it, or thinking that social housing is ok so long as it is not in my street or neighbourhood.
Communities need to be more supportive of people in social housing and we need to change some of the rhetoric around Kāinga Ora tenants.
Demonising or stereotyping social housing tenants is unhelpful and doesn’t recognise they are mostly well-meaning, house-proud people who need some assistance to get on their feet and hopefully transition back to independent living over time.
As we work to implement our reset plan, I also ask New Zealanders - and commentators - to give us a reasonable chance to prove we can do a better job – to prove we can build and renew houses at good value to the taxpayer, to support tenants to live well and to demonstrate we can move out the small minority of tenants who are not willing to pay rent or be good neighbours.
If we make mistakes we’ll fix them.
This year will be a year of significant change for Kāinga Ora.
We have a lot of work to do and a lot of previous decisions to reset before we will start seeing the results we want.
We have to accept that some of the resetting of past decisions will come at a short-term pain, but it’s the future that matters more.
Together with my board colleagues and re-energised management team, I will ensure we deliver significant performance improvements and I’ll be pleased to report our progress to the public in full.
As part of its reset, Kāinga Ora is changing its approach to managing rent debt to speed up repayment and address some historic issues. Chief Executive Matt Crockett outlines the changes that are being made and the reasons for them.
Over the past 12 months, our frontline teams have been working with tenants to reduce their rent debt. This has resulted in total rent debt falling from $21.6 million in January 2024 to $16.1 million at the same time this year.
But we want the amount owed to fall faster and to make sure we keep rent debt down in the future. So we are making changes as part of the broader reset of Kāinga Ora to address this.
New policy
We’re going to reduce debt by taking a firmer approach with tenants who are behind on their rent. We will be fair and reasonable – but rent must be paid.
We will continue to support households who fall on hard times but are making genuine attempts to get back on track with their rent. We’re a social housing landlord so that’s the right thing to do.
But, through our new rent debt policy, we are drawing a line on how patient we can be. We don’t want to end tenancies, but we will if tenants are not meeting their obligations to reduce their rent debt, are skipping rent payments or refusing to work with us.
We're also taking action to prevent large debts in future. Our new approach seeks to ensure that tenants will not have accumulated more than 12 weeks’ worth of rent debt when their tenancy is ended. This means we will begin the process of ending a tenancy earlier than in the past. This provides clarity about what will happen, and when, to both our tenants and our frontline.
Partial debt forgiveness
A small number of Kāinga Ora tenants – less than 3% - have accumulated more than 12 weeks’ worth of rent debt. There are a range of reasons for this, including social and economic events over the past five years and the steps Kāinga Ora took to respond to government policy, particularly during the pandemic.
We’re going to help those tenants get on top of their rent debt faster by reducing the amount owed to a level that is more realistic for them to repay in full. We’ll only do this for tenants who are consistently paying their rent and making reasonable payments to reduce their debt. In return for this one-off help, tenants must continue reducing their debt.
This will provide a clear incentive to tenants who are not currently meeting their obligations to change their behaviour and speed up repaying what they owe. If they consistently do this, they will be eligible to have part of their debt forgiven. But if they do not, we will take steps to end their tenancy.
We expect to forgive up to $8.3 million of the $16.17 million we’re owed. This is already provisioned for on our balance sheets as it is regarded as doubtful debt, so there will be no impact on our financial performance.
We think this is the right thing to do. The likelihood of collecting all this debt is low, given the time it will take tenants to pay it off and the significant costs associated with chasing it. We’re also conscious that during the pandemic the steps we took to respond to government policy meant we didn’t chase debt in the way we normally would, so we carry a measure of responsibility.
We’re being pragmatic. We think we’re better off focusing on recovering the remaining debt faster and ensuring current tenants do not get into too much debt.
All tenants whose debt is reduced will still have a significant amount to repay. And they’ll have a strong incentive to do this under our new policy, which it makes it clear we will end tenancies if tenants do not meet their rent obligations.
Looking ahead
It’s important we strike the right balance between supporting households in difficult circumstances and ensuring that our tenants meet their obligations. We will be closely monitoring the impact of both the new rent debt policy and partial rent debt forgiveness to ensure we have the right balance. If necessary, we will make further adjustments.
Over the past few months, we have been reviewing our social housing delivery pipeline.
Our assessment process, which is being carried out in stages, involves looking at:
- The locations where we are trying to deliver more homes, or where renewal of older homes is a high priority,
- The costs and plans of the proposed projects and checking they still stack up financially and that there are not better options for using the site.
Over the two years to 30 June 2026, Kāinga Ora will be adding 2,650 additional homes to the state housing stock and renewing almost 3,000 other state homes. We want to make sure we are getting best value for money from our projects so we can deliver social housing in the areas where it is most needed.
Initially our priority was to ensure we met our social housing delivery targets for this financial year, so the first stage of our assessment process focused on proposed projects with the potential to be delivered before 30 June 2025.
That first stage is now complete. We have now moved onto the second stage, which involves reviewing all proposed projects for our 2025/2026 build programmes.
As part of this second stage, we will take another look at projects not selected to proceed in the first assessment stage, so it is still possible some of those projects will proceed.
We expect to complete the second stage of our assessment around the middle of 2025. At that point we will be able to say which projects are going ahead and which are being cancelled.
Some sites may need to wait for future decisions on our build programme beyond the 2026 financial year.
If we are not going to proceed with a planned development, where possible we will bring existing homes on sites back into our letting pool.
As decisions are made on projects, we will inform our partners and the community.
More information
- Kāinga Ora state housing projects under assessment - 11 September 2024
- Our approach to delivering social housing
Online resources
Page updated: 7 May 2025