The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock.

“National’s reckless cuts is now seeing 170 roles at Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development on the chopping block all to pay for tax cuts,” Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said.

“The National Party needs to make its mind up, does it want to end the housing crisis or does it want to see the end of Kainga Ora? It can’t have both.

“Every time we ask them for an answer about the social housing build programme they point to the review under way. But they’re quite happy to strip the jobs away from people that were finding available land and building houses before the review reports back.

“Our Labour Government delivered the most public homes each year since the 1950s with one in six homes in New Zealand’s entire public housing stock added between 2017 and 2023.

“Chris Bishop and Tama Potaka have promised New Zealanders they would build more houses than Labour yet so far their record on housing is: making it harder for people to access emergency housing, easier to be kicked out of tenancies, giving $2.9b of tax cuts to landlords while refusing to confirm funding for more homes past 2025, building consents falling through the floor, community housing projects cancelled, and now jobs being cut from the agency that has build more houses than any previous National government combined.

“We can’t forget the last National government ended up with 1,500 fewer public homes than it started with and sucked out $576 million in dividends.

“They had a choice and it’s clear they’re choosing tax cuts for landlords over housing Kiwis,” said Kieran McAnulty.

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