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Staff at Kāinga Ora were being briefed by management on Wednesday.
Kāinga Ora employed almost 3300 staff as of April 2023. Photo / RNZ
That included a proposal to more than halve the number of staff on its Te Kurutao Group Māori team which it set up to meet Māori housing needs and fulfil Treaty of Waitangi obligations.
Kāinga Ora said the proposed cuts would hit roles across the organisation’s urban planning and design, commercial, construction and innovation, and investment management office teams.
Chief executive Matt Crockett said the proposal was aimed at ensuring the agency could deliver on the Government’s housing delivery expectations in the most efficient way possible in the coming years.
“Kāinga Ora has scaled up over the last five years to deliver a successful and extensive build programme,” he said.
“We are now moving into a different phase where our focus is on creating a steadier state of social housing builds, alongside work to upgrade and replace thousands of homes in our portfolio.”
A period of consultation would follow, with decisions to be confirmed in mid-November.
“These proposed changes will be unsettling for our people. We are committed to supporting them through the process as best we can, and to considering all feedback they provide,” Crockett said.
A staffer said the mood at the agency was terrible.
They said the chief executive was to brief staff about 1.15pm today, with pre-announcement briefings with individual business groups to be held before then.
Kāinga Ora said in a statement it was working with teams across the organisation to “achieve efficiencies and identify potential savings”.
It said it was committed to making sure staff were the first to learn of any proposed changes, and supporting them.
Kāinga Ora employed 3438 staff as of July 1, 2024.
Kāinga Ora chief executive Andrew McKenzie resigned in July this year and will receive a payout of around $365,000 as compensation for notice and redundancy. He is set to leave the organisation in October.
The Government has made several changes at its social housing agency and signalled more would be on the way, in response to a recent highly critical review chaired by Sir Bill English.
It concluded the agency was underperforming and not financially viable.
Five of seven board members are also going.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Kāinga Ora needed to be clearer on its strategy and have better financial management.
In July, Housing Minister Chris Bishop released a letter of expectations for the Kāinga Ora board with financial sustainability as the top priority followed by delivery on wider government objectives, and “continued delivery with an enhanced focus on doing so in a fiscally responsible way”.
The month before Bishop had said that Kāinga Ora was “underperforming and not financially viable” in its current state, that its social housing problem was not delivering the results New Zealand needed and that it was “lacking in transparency and accountability”.
