No new solutions in housing report

The Government's housing stocktake report released today adds no new knowledge or solutions and simply repeats the already well-publicised views of the authors, National’s Housing Spokesperson Michael Woodhouse says.

“The proposals are largely the ones the previous Government already had underway, however the Government has also stopped approvals for Special Housing Areas and cancelled the Te Ture Whenua land reforms,” Mr Woodhouse says.

“The only new programme is their flagship KiwiBuild policy, but advice from officials released last week shows it is unlikely to deliver more than 4,000 additional houses over the first three years – only a quarter of what the Minister has promised.

“In fact the Reserve Bank in its Monetary Policy Statement last week said it expected house building activity to grow more slowly in the next couple of years than it has in the last couple of years.

“The Government has created an expectation that thousands of New Zealanders are going to get access to a significantly subsidised first home and there's no sign that that's going to happen.

“The solution to housing pressures is simply to get more houses built.

“We are in the biggest residential boom in New Zealand’s history with more than 30,000 houses a year being built, and house prices are now flat to falling.

“The previous National Government had 102,000 houses forecast to be built over the next three years. The new Government needs to stop writing reports and get on and build on that.”

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