More renovation required for Kāinga Ora: Whanganui MP Carl Bates

Whanganui MP Carl Bates (right) pictured at Whanganui's AGC Training where students learn Level 3 Carpentry skills by building new homes.

Carl Bates is the Whanganui Member of Parliament

OPINION

Stratford Mayor Neil Volzke’s recent column on Kāinga Ora achieved his goal of a column that “informs and sometimes provokes”. Politics, be it at a local or national level, is often a provocative business.

Kāinga Ora (KO) is a large and important Crown entity, with assets of $45 billion and over $2.5b of expenditure each year. It owns over 70,000 homes and is the country’s biggest landlord.

Over the past six years, even while billions of dollars were poured into it by the previous Government, Kāinga Ora left thousands of social houses sitting vacant, tenants were left to rack up enormous rent arrears, and threatening, abusive tenants were permitted to continue living in Kāinga Ora homes.

The review undertaken by the current Government in its first 100 days found that Kāinga Ora was underperforming and not financially viable without significant savings as well as funding and financing changes. Mayor Neil’s column essentially acknowledged how that has impacted Stratford over a period of time.

The review also found that Kāinga Ora is not as cost conscious as it could be. For example, their redevelopment costs are around $35,000 higher per home than developer-led construction.

The coalition Government believes Kāinga Ora requires significant work to bring focus back to fiscal discipline and good governance so that the best outcomes are achieved for tenants and taxpayers.

We also believe the answer to social housing challenges does not lie solely with KO but also with Community Housing Providers (CHPs).

As part of Budget 2024, we announced the Government will allocate $140 million for 1500 new social housing places to be provided by Community Housing Providers, not Kāinga Ora.

The Government’s new investment in 1500 social housing places will start to become available from July 2025 onwards, giving the community housing sector much-needed certainty about the social housing pipeline. This allows them to plan for the future and scale up their build programmes.

Kāinga Ora still has a vital role to play in social housing, but first it must get its own house in order. Until the Government has received and approved the turnaround plan demanded of the refreshed Kāinga Ora board, no further funding will be budgeted for additional social housing places through them.

In the meantime, like Mayor Neil, I commend KO for building new social housing in Stratford. Kāinga Ora must, however, be able to build in a manner that is cost-competitive and provides as many homes as possible within their funding envelope.

In order to reduce the social housing waiting list, which multiplied by four times under the previous Government, like Minister Bishop, I am not worried who owns or builds the new homes. I care about getting Kiwi families into warm, dry homes.

While the coalition Government is getting the settings right and fixing Kāinga Ora, as your local MP I will continue to advocate for initiatives to build homes for the people of this region.