Kāinga Ora state housing projects under assessment

Over the two years to 30 June 2026, Kāinga Ora will be adding 2,650 homes to our state housing stock and renewing almost 3,000 other state homes.

We build additional state houses based on the Government’s Public Housing Plan, which tells us how many houses are needed and where they are needed.

We also renew our existing homes, to make sure we have homes in the right locations and our homes are suitable for the people that need them. We do this through renovation, removing homes and redeveloping on the same land, or selling and replacing it with another home elsewhere.

We’ve recently received confirmation of these additional housing and renewal requirements for the next two years, including the locations of greatest need.

We have the vast majority of the required work underway, with almost 3,600 homes currently under construction or contracted for delivery in the next two years.

In the pursuit of best value decisions, we are looking at our social housing delivery plans and reassessing some projects. This includes looking at the costs and plans for over 300 proposed projects that are at differing stages.

A project can take several years from inception to completion as it is scoped, designed, planned, consented, procured, constructed and delivered. This means our pipeline of projects spans several years and it takes time to scale up or down.

The investment already made in these projects* often includes removing old social housing that is no longer fit for purpose, scoping, consenting the project to redevelop the land, and then procuring the construction work to deliver the new homes. In some cases, it also includes civil and infrastructure work to prepare the land for redevelopment. These costs are typical across the wider construction sector in the early stages of projects.

Although we mostly redevelop on land we already own, occasionally we also acquire land in areas of high social housing need so some costs have gone into purchasing sites.

Making land build-ready contributes to the overall value of the asset. The investment in this land will have future benefits as we look at the options available to redevelop it for social housing.

Working through the additional homes we have been asked to deliver and the renewal of our housing portfolio is an ongoing process. Some of the proposed projects will proceed at a future date. Others will be reworked to ensure better value for money.

As decisions are made on projects, we will inform our partners and the community.

Read more about our approach to social housing delivery.

*TVNZ incorrectly reported this cost as almost $3bn – the investment in our projects under assessment we provided to them in early September 2024 was actually only approximately $300million – this cost continues to change as decisions are made on our projects.