By Louis Collins
Chris Bishop and Tama Potaka answering questions during the Kāinga Ora annual review. Photo: Louis Collins
Housing has been one of the trickiest portfolios for successive governments. Its quality, supply, warmth, and affordability have all been problems. Theories about how to fix 'the housing crisis' are common.
Suburban New Zealand is thick with ex-state houses. They show that housing has been in crisis before, and has been managed. Nearly a century since the first state houses, they remain a crucial service. Kāinga Ora's 72,000-plus properties make it the largest residential landlord in the country.
Debt loads, hefty waiting lists and a mismatch between available housing and what is needed are identified as issues.
During the annual review of Kāinga Ora this week, Housing Minister Chris Bishop told the Social Services Committee 60 percent of people on the housing register required one-bedroom homes, but only about 10 percent of the ministry's homes fit the bill.
Bishop suggested the problem was also true of New Zealand housing stock generally.
"It all comes down to rent and affordability, and we just have an undersupply of houses across the continuum… [The wait-list] people classified as 'in severe and urgent need of housing' ... can't afford the private rental market because we haven't built enough houses over the last 30 years, when we've had the fastest house price growth in the OECD… and we've made it nearly impossible to build housing in this country."
The House For Sun 8 Dec
Bishop is also the minister for RMA reform - an area he seems passionate about. During the Kāinga Ora hearing, Bishop lamented low land availability and regulation as barriers to housing, saying "the evidence is really clear".
"Cities that have functional land markets and infrastructure that is allowed to be built without barrier after barrier in the way, have cheaper and affordable housing."
Nodding supportively beside Bishop was his junior minister, Tama Potaka, responsible for emergency housing. In Question Time some questions are known in advance and deflection is easy. There are fewer escapes in an annual review hearing.
Labour MP Kieran McAnulty asks questions of the housing ministers. Photo: Louis Collins
Labour MP Kieran McAnulty suggested Potaka was avoiding questions.
"Whenever we've tried to ask you about this in the House, frankly, it's been dismissed," McAnulty said. "At least give us an acknowledgement that the change in criteria has played a part in the reduction of the emergency housing numbers."
Potaka didn't give McAnulty as straight an answer as he wanted.
"In terms of the declines, there has been a slight increase in the number of applications that have been declined, but nearly 50 percent of those that have been declined in the month of October were actually triaged and helped in a different way to get into housing, not into emergency housing. So I think there's some 'good news stories', and how we are making sure that the system operates in a manner to help people get into housing that is not emergency housing."
There certainly isn't an easy fix to housing - results will take time. The combined housing and emergency portfolios require both addressing short-term needs, while also working to fix systemic housing issues over the longer term. It's a role unlikely to show real success until years after a minister has departed.
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