A Talbot Mills poll, commissioned by Public Housing Futures found that 72% of people in Aotearoa agree that the Government should play a role in boosting the construction sector and addressing the housing crisis by building state housing at scale. This comes in the wake of Chris Bishop’s decision to wind down Kāinga Ora’s role in building housing, and ahead of National’s Infrastructure Investors Summit next week where international investors and construction companies are expected to be in attendance.

“The state has lots of levers to get us out of this recession - state housing construction is an obvious lever. It creates jobs, it builds homes people can actually afford, and it starts to meaningfully address the housing catastrophe at the scale needed,” says Vanessa Cole, spokesperson of Public Housing Futures.

“Since coming into power, the Coalition Government has gutted Kāinga Ora, stagnated the construction of state housing, let hundreds of planned developments sit empty while people wait for homes, and now plan to sell-off more state housing.

“This poll shows that there is a clear public mandate across the political spectrum for the government to build state housing, and to build state housing at scale.

“Despite the rhetoric from the Government around being ‘agnostic’ about who builds housing, this poll shows that people believe that the state, and therefore Kāinga Ora, have a key role to play in building the homes we need.

“We have a housing catastrophe in this country with over 100,000 people living in severe housing deprivation, and many more struggling to pay their rent each week. State housing is the most effective way to address this crisis on the scale needed.

“The community housing sector, which the government is funding to build only 1500 socially rented places, does not have the resources and scale - and will be forced to rely on private investors who can pull the rug out at any time, leading to a loss of socially-rented housing,” says Cole.

“In place of a large-scale state housing construction programme, the government is promoting privatisation, amending the Overseas Investment Act to allow multi-national institutional investors to invest in build-to-rent – a profit-driven model that has been proven internationally to lead to rent hikes and worsening conditions for renters,” says Grace Newton spokesperson for Public Housing Futures

“By resourcing the construction of state housing, it helps keep our builders, plumbers and electricians in work at a time when the industry is in a slump and unemployment is on the rise, and it helps to get people in our communities into their desperately needed new homes.

“In the lead up to Luxon and Bishop’s Infrastructure Investors Summit, this poll is an important reminder that people want the Government to place our collective resources towards building public infrastructure - like state housing - instead of inviting privatisation in the form of multi-national investors profiting from the things we need to thrive,” says Newton.

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