In Onehunga, Auckland, the site where a 186-apartment Kainga Ora development was planned now sits empty, after tenants of the previous building moved out and the new project was cancelled. Photo: Sharon Brettkelly
Despite a housing crisis, Kainga Ora is scaling back new builds. In one Auckland suburb, a cancelled development has uprooted hundreds.
New Zealand is short tens of thousands of social houses, and billions of dollars to fund them, while the numbers of "stressed" renters is growing, but a community housing leader says we can still fix the crisis that has dragged on for decades.
"I actually believe as New Zealanders if we put our minds to this and we make some different choices we can absolutely solve this housing crisis," says Community Housing Aotearoa chief executive Paul Gilberd.
But it will not happen overnight, and as demand grows he warns that overall investment in new social housing is falling.
The "magic thing" that unlocks the ability to build the houses at scale is government funding of the community housing sector, he says.
"If the government is willing to turn that dial up, we can as a sector walking alongside Kainga Ora, deliver the things that I think New Zealanders want in terms of the vision of the sort of country they live in," he says.
Gilberd has worked in the sector for decades and in his current role oversees 100 community housing providers (CHPs) that run more than 30,000 homes.
He says Kainga Ora's announcement last month that it has cancelled plans to build nearly 3500 new homes around the country and is capping the numbers of state-owned homes it provides at 78,000 is a reflection of a government that sees itself in a diminished role in commissioning new affordable housing, while backing the CHPs to fill the gap.
He is telling his members to find partners such as church groups and local councils to deliver as many affordable homes as they can.
The new Community Housing Funding Agency is a step in the right direction to finding the tens of billions of dollars needed to build more than 20,000 extra homes, he says, but it falls short of similar agencies in other countries which have the gold standard full government guarantee.
"Then it becomes a gamechanger because it reduces the risk to investors," he says.
Jeremy, a neighbour of a cancelled Kainga Ora project in Onehunga, Auckland tells The Detail of the saga of the on/off development that went on for years before the final announcement last month.
Jeremy and his wife bought their house in 2018, believing that they would be living next door to architecturally designed, state-owned apartments.
"It's been an empty site for over a year now and that peace is lovely for us right now but it's not a long-term solution. The thing that I wonder about is how much of this development next door is now going to be completely piecemeal," he says.
For Newsroom Pro managing editor Jonathan Milne, the development on Jordan Avenue is close to his heart, as an Onehunga resident and former local school board member.
He says that the tenants who were moved out of the development for the rebuild were promised first dibs on the new apartments. When he tried to track down families who had lived there before it was demolished, they were nowhere to be found.
"I spent days trying to find former tenants of Jordan Ave, I couldn't find any. No one knows where they've gone, no one knows their phone numbers anymore, they've just disappeared."
He says the dramatic change at Kainga Ora is difficult for the tenants.
"In all this discussion we've heard a lot about dollars and hectares and numbers of residences and square metres, but we haven't heard from the voices of the tenants."
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