Five years after campaigning on fixing New Zealand’s housing crisis, Labour has built just 1.4 per cent of their promised 100,000 KiwiBuild homes and overseen more kids living in cars and motels, National’s Housing spokesperson Chris Bishop says.

“Jacinda Ardern said in 2017, ‘I refuse to stand by while children are sleeping in cars’. Yet, under her watch, around 200 kids are now living in cars, up from from 51 in December 2017.

“It is a tragedy that any child in New Zealand is going to sleep in a car every night. Living in an emergency motel isn’t much better, but that’s the reality for around 4000 other Kiwi kids – four times as many since Labour took office.

“These kids need more than just kind words and good intentions, they need a home to live in.

“Labour is spending $1 million a week on emergency housing and the state house waitlist is up by 20,000 applicants in the last five years. This Government has utterly failed to deliver on housing and doesn’t have a plan to solve what is now a housing catastrophe.

“Labour’s flagship housing policy, KiwiBuild, is the poster child of their inability to deliver.

“In July 2018, the Government said that KiwiBuild would deliver 1,000 homes within a year, another 5,000 by June 2020, and 10,000 in total by June 2021. But as of September 2022, they have only built 1430 KiwiBuild homes.

“At its current rate, KiwiBuild will reach the 100,000 mark in 2315. KiwiBuild is arguably the biggest policy failure in New Zealand history.

“Labour needs to stop making excuses and take action to address their housing failures which are causing incalculable pain for many Kiwi families.

“National will partner with the community housing sector to get more houses built, reverse Labour’s Tenant Tax and brightline test extension, and use a social investment approach to get people into transitional housing with wraparound support.”

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