Building 400 new state homes in Kenepuru — CANCELLED; 400 new state homes in Onehunga — CANCELLED; 1000s of other planned state homes — CANCELLED
It sounds like the valuable and irreplacable land that Kāinga Ora currently owns will be sold. Our Govt is making the excuse that it’s too expensive for government to fix our housing crisis by building homes.
I assume the land will be handed over to the private sector once again, as it was under the Tamaki Transformation Project and other schemes. Some party donors do very well out of that, as they do from all govt asset sales.
Taxpayers will then pay increasing $billions more for accommodation allowances for many decades to come. All of those $200s per week add up to a substantial amount, even for one renter. That will be on top of the extra $billions for interest tax deductability and tax-free capital gains that investors and landlords will enjoy.
Property investors are triple dipping and we’ll keep paying and be tenants in our own land in the long term.
I feel sure that the substantial gifts paid to landlords would have built thousands of houses that we would have owned eventually once loans had been repaid. Now we’ll own nothing but we will have very expensive future subsidy commitments.
See two recent Newsroom stories: Cost blowouts cancel flagship govt deal for 400 new homes; Debt-stricken Kāinga Ora pauses big public housing projects, sells land.
Mary-Ann de Kort
