A response to the governments ‘success’ in reaching emergency housing reduction targets

A Think Piece by Dwell CE Elizabeth Lester

No-one wants to see Kiwi kids growing up in motels.

So in principle it’s hard to disagree with the Government’s move towards eliminating emergency housing as a long-term solution. But the changes in policy can only be deemed a success if they go hand in hand with an increase in the supply of social housing as an alternative to the motels.

So far the only people who have been tracked as successfully moving out of emergency housing and into permanent long-term homes, are moving into public housing builds that were funded under the last Government.

We only need to look at the 2023 NZ census data to see that the need for housing is staggering.

4,965 people in NZ are “without shelter”.

13,796 are in “temporary accommodation” such as emergency and transitional housing, marae, campgrounds, Women’s Refuge, or homeless shelters.

93,735 people are either in severely overcrowded accommodation or in uninhabitable housing due to a lack of basic amenities (e.g. a drinking water tap, kitchen sink, electricity, or working toilet).

These numbers are appalling.

It’s obvious the private market cannot provide the number of affordable homes that NZ needs. Despite property values having decreased in recent times, construction costs remain high and even private developers are struggling. According to the figures released by Statistics NZ last week, 49% fewer building consents were issued for new dwellings in Wellington City last year than the year before.

The Government has signalled that it wants to support community housing providers to build more. Yet the funding that has been announced for organisations like Dwell will provide for just 750 homes per year for the next two years. That won’t even keep up with the numbers who will join the social housing waitlist in that time.

Meanwhile Dwell’s build project funding applications are on hold at the Ministry (of Housing and Urban Development), and we’ve been given no answers on our proposed pipeline of projects.

So if there are not enough new public homes being built, and no temporary accommodation to plug the gap, where will people go? NZ is about to find out.

It’s too early to celebrate the progress on emergency housing. The real success will come when we build enough homes to house our homeless on a long-term basis and focus on the public housing infrastructure that New Zealand so desperately needs.

This article was first shared on LinkedIn on Wednesday 29 January 2025.