Helping Kiwis into homes

Posted by on September 22, 2020

Everyone deserves a warm, dry place to live. As part of our plan for housing, Labour’s making sure more New Zealanders have a healthy place to live, while tackling long-term issues like homelessness and housing affordability.

Here’s how we’re helping Kiwis into homes.

Labour is committed to warmer, healthier homes.

When we came into Government, far too many New Zealanders were living in cold, damp homes. That’s why we made it a priority to set minimum standards for rental properties - because a warm, dry home should be a basic right.

Our Healthy Homes standards are already making rental homes warmer and healthier, and protecting Kiwi children from contracting respiratory illnesses. However, National wants to rip up these standards - meaning more children growing up in cold, damp homes.

We’ve delivered more public houses than at any time in the past 20 years – and we’re building thousands more.

National sold off 6,000 state houses during their time in Government. Labour has already delivered 5,308 new public houses, getting more Kiwi families into homes. What’s more, we’ve committed to funding another 8,000 public and transitional houses, creating jobs in our construction sector as we

We’ve made renting fairer.

More Kiwis than ever are now renting, including families with young children and older New Zealanders. But when we came into Government, New Zealand’s rental laws were out-of-date and didn’t reflect our changing society.

That’s why we’ve reformed the Residential Tenancies Act to make renting fairer. This includes changes to limit rent increases to once a year, removing no-cause terminations so families can put down roots in their community, and making rental properties safer and more liveable by enabling tenants to make minor changes to the property, such as installing child-proofing, hanging pictures, or earthquake-proofing.

Our plan to tackle homelessness is already underway.

Finding safe accommodation for our most vulnerable people through the COVID-19 pandemic was a key priority for our Government. Now, we’re supporting people into longer term accommodation and providing wraparound support to make sure every New Zealander has a roof over their head and a safe place to live. Homelessness won’t be solved overnight, but we’ve made a good start.

We’re making it easier for New Zealanders to get into their first home.

More New Zealanders will be helped into home ownership through our Progressive Home Ownership Scheme. This scheme will support up to 4,000 low to median income families who are struggling to pull together a deposit, or pay a mortgage, into home ownership, and focus on areas where housing affordability is most severe.