National plan 'doesn't fix housing crisis' - Hipkins

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says the National's Party's plan to tighten emergency housing criteria will remove people in need from the list.

"That doesn't actually fix the housing crisis," Hipkins said at a media standup in the Remutaka electorate on Saturday.

"Pretending the homeless people and people who haven't got adequate housing, don't exist, isn't the way to fix the housing crisis.

The National Party plans to wind down the use of motels as emergency accommodation, and move families into social housing.

It said to get an emergency housing grant, families would need to be in genuine need, and there must be no genuine alternative accommodation available.

The party planned to increase the number of social housing places funded by government, as well as provide more capital to Community Housing Providers to compete with Kāinga Ora.

Hipkins said his electorate office saw people "all the time" who had a genuine housing need.

"We need to have more public houses in order to satisfy that housing need."

The last time National was in government it did the same thing, effectively cutting down demand by cutting criteria, Hipkins said.

"When the National Party were last in government, they basically deleted the lowest two levels of priority on the public housing waiting list.

"What that meant was that those people, with their housing needs didn't go away, their housing needs just got worse and worse.

"Part of the reason we've seen an explosion in priority one and priority two applications for public housing is that these people have been around a long time and it's just that their needs have gotten greater since the National Party purged them from the list in the first place."

National said it would establish a priority one category on the Social Housing Register for families who have been in emergency housing motels or sleeping in cars for longer than 12 weeks, putting them at the front of the queue for social housing.

Hipkins' on National's literacy policy

Hipkins said National's policy requiring schools to use structured literacy to teach reading and writing, announced on Friday, would disadvantage some children.

National said if elected it planned to have primary school teachers learn the approach as part of certification, introduce phonics checks to test Year 2s' reading, and bring in structured literacy interventions for those who need extra support.

Hipkins said a range of tools were needed to strengthen literacy and numeracy.

Picking just one would ultimately disadvantage some children, he said.

"Anybody who's been in a classroom and seen a whole range of different kids will know that different kids have got different strengths and weaknesses, and you teach different kids in different ways based on the strengths and weaknesses that they've got."

Hipkins said National tried the same one size fits all approach with National Standards and that made things worse.

On the campaign trail

Hipkins was campaigning on home soil in the Remutaka electorate on Saturday.

With just 5 weeks until the election, he visited stall holders and locals at the Upper Hutt Spring Festival and was all smiles as he wandered down main street greeting residents like old friends.

Thousands of people were at the festivities, many stopping to take a picture with leader, while Hutt South candidate Ginny Andersen played photographer.

Hipkins described the vibe out on the streets as positive and in his own electorate he was not met by many opponents.

But he said Labour's campaign still had a lot of ground to cover, with many voters still undecided.