Kiwibuild housing plan should be led by private sector says Property Institute

October 30, 2017

New homes are at the top of the agenda for the new Housing Minister Phil Twyford.

The new Government's Kiwibuild initiative to build 100,000 new homes in the next 10 years working with private developers should be led by the private sector, according to the Property Institute of New Zealand.

Plans to end homelessness and the launch of Kiwibuild are at the top of the agenda for the new Housing Minister Phil Twyford. 

The property institute, which represents property sector professionals, says the private sector will be put off and the building slowed of the Government leads Kiwibuild.

"[We're] very anxious to see where that balance is going to fall," Ashley Church, chief executive of the Property Institute told 1 News.

"If the Government ends up being the major player you'll essentially put off private sector involvement and the speed at which these homes are built probably won't be at the same rate," he said.

Mr Twyford says his goal is to eliminate homelessness and he doesn't want to be paying $100,000 a day to put homeless people up in motels.

"I want advice on why it's been so slow for the former Government to build the transitional housing that they promised a year ago," he said.

National list MP Steven Joyce says the question for the new Government is, "how are they going to do it differently, and we'll be watching with great interest".

There are nearly 1600 vacant state houses, and Mr Twyford, the New Lynn MP, will talk to Housing New Zealand about using those.

Also under Labour's plans are, National's Special Housing Areas aimed at fast tracking consent for housing will be scrapped.

State house sell-offs will be stopped, but Labour will keep National's policy of buying up surplus Crown land.

Is the funding as it's been currently proposed by the Labour Party going to be sufficient?

—  Ashley Church | Property Institute chief executive

"I suspect with this and a whole range of measures, what we might find ultimately is the new Government will end up re-badging stuff that the previous government was already doing," Mr Joyce said.

Another idea is to create satellite cities in places like Paerata, south of Auckland.

Mr Twyford said it would take a few years to get that up and running but he's interested in 10 to 15 large new urban development projects around Auckland and "most of those you'd want in the city in places like Henderson and Manukau".

Mr Church said: "The question in this whole things is, is the funding as it's been currently proposed by the Labour Party going to be sufficient to meet the ability to build at the speed they actually need to to put those homes in place?"

1 NEWS political reporter Katie Bradford says there are a lot of obstacles in the way, including getting enough developers on board to help build the houses and finding funding for the required infrastructure.

"So Phil Twyford may find it's a lot harder in office than in opposition," she said.

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