I’ve long argued that ending the housing crisis requires multiple actions in a holistic strategy, which needs to be based in mass social housing not BUILD MOAR HOUSES for the private market. This is because the private market and the decades long push to get New Zealanders (those that can afford to) to use the housing market as investment has driven the housing crisis. It’s not the only driver of housing poverty, but it’s a major one.
Building mass social housing that never enters the private market would take the wind out of that insane system, which led to record high house prices and rentals, by tipping supply and demand mechanics in favour of affordability (dropping housing costs over time).
So what can a centre left, social democrat party do? Labour are doing something very interesting with their social housing policy announced yesterday.
NZH,
Labour is promising, if elected, to make it easier for public housing tenants to buy their homes.
Announcing the plans in Auckland on Tuesday, Labour’s housing spokesman Kieran McAnulty said the policy was “a game-changer and a life-changer”.
The policy introduces a new rent-to-buy scheme that allows public housing tenants to save for a house deposit. Under the scheme, $100 a week will be credited towards a house deposit, with the funds held in a trust account.
The scheme would help people save $5200 a year, Labour says, and allow tenants to accumulate enough to put a deposit down on a home.
This helps people who can already afford a mortgage but don’t have enough income to save for a deposit to buy their own home.
It places home ownership once again as a New Zealand norm, not just for the upper middle or upwardly mobile classes.
But it gets better. Labour are saying that for every KO house sold this way, the government will build three new public housing homes. Using the money from the sale of the first house to help build the next three.
There are limits on who can apply and what they can do with the money saved ($100/week of the rent). It’s not a scheme where people can take the money out and spend on what they want.
One of the flow on effects here is that it requires people to stay in one place, which in turn builds community. At the point they have the 5% deposit and can buy the house, presumably they can then sell if they want. That’s still holding up the property ladder, but it’s a decent step in the right direction.
For the people thinking ‘what about all the people struggling who aren’t in social housing?’, there’s plenty of policy on offer.
Chris Hipkins on BHN last night said he wanted to over-deliver. Labour’s promises are moderate, because they don’t want to over promise and under deliver, but that doesn’t mean it’s all they are going to do. This I like as well. More and more I am appreciating Labour’s attempt to be normal instead of attention grabbing, politicising, populist power mongers (cough cough the National, ACT, NZ First).
The overall potential strategy for the left here is a solid first term Labour government that gets a lot of the basics right and establishing the centre left position as the norm, while the Greens and Te Pāti Māori spend that time pulling the Overton Window further left/green. We can build on that.
This housing policy is a good one for winning a close election. Labour are saying turn out is the way to win this year, so don’t forget the next 10 days is Get Out the Vote.
Kieran McAnulty explains the policy,
Chris Hipkin’s intro is good too,
Get out the vote in this instance means to the communities that will respond well to this policy.
This might be the best policy outline for housing I have seen from any of the parties in the last ten years. There will be plenty of detail to work through, but its a great outline. Housing is pretty much everyone's biggest cost, be it mortgage or rent, and this would longterm help alleviate the pressure on both renters and mortgage holders.
I'd like to see the details too, but agree, it's just a really solid idea.
the more I think about it the more I think they've hit the sweet spot between going left and getting elected.
Yes. It is a good policy. "Rent to own" has been talked about in the past , but I have often wondered how the mechanics of it would actually work
The actual outcome of this policy, when it was introduced in the 20th century, was to permanently remove social housing stock.
Individual tenants bought their homes, and then many (especially in the 90s) on-sold – privately – to maximize the capital gain.
It has almost always been a National Party policy, not a Labour one – and I'm astounded to see it being approved of on TS.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/2185417/labour-pledges-to-help-public-housing-tenants-buy-their-homes
So what happens when Labour is no longer in government? It can't hold a different government to account for a promise it made. And it would be naive to expect a future right wing government to buy into this vision (or to assume that there will never be a right-wing government, again)
The only way that I can see this working (and it's a policy that I've been in favour of, in other TS discussions), is to require that any subsequent sale be back to the State. To sweeten the pot, it could also be a house only valuation (the land remaining in State ownership).
Agree with that to a certain extent.
Especially if land is leased from the State, as in Singapore, instead. Makes the house more affordable, and puts future downward pressure on land speculation.
that would make it cheaper/easier for people to get ahead too. Have two different streams.
I like both those ideas, although if the point is to help people onto the property ladder there will be a trade off.
Labour can't base policy on what National will do next time. If National want to scrap the scheme, or change it so there are no social houses being built, they can already do that. Oh wait, that's what they've been doing for three years already.
No, but they can scrap the three houses scheduled to be built – and the original house has already been sold.
Resulting in a permanent reduction of the social housing stock.
I reckon email Labour after the election with the policy amendments, they're good.
But is the point to help people onto the "property ladder"?
Surely point of social housing is to provide long-term accommodation. Not to help people to participate in house-price speculation.
I can definitely get on board with tax dollars being used to help people gain a 'stake' in their state house. Families with incentive to maintain and develop their homes, and who can be long-term participants in community life. I have a lot less interest in encouraging people to buy houses from the state (presumably at a conservative price) and flip them – for profit.
Yes, Labour value the property ladder, they see it as one of the ways people get out of poverty (or avoid poverty). This is true to an extent. Owning a home is much more secure than renting. And the ladder enables people to increase their wealth over time. The latter is a driver of the housing crisis, the policy is imperfect.
I don't have a problem with people being helped by teh state and being able to use that to get ahead on their own. That's what the state should be doing, across the board. I like your idea that the state should buy back the house though, that solves a lot of the problems with the policy. Not sure exactly how it would work (pricing? would inflation mean the government kept paying more and more for SH?).
A policy is not bad just because you can't legally Tory-proof it. Almost most all LW policy would be bad on that measure. Tory-proofing is achieved by having a policy that it so popular in its practical effects that nobody dares change it. Policies need time to achieve that status – so get them done early in the life of a government. Long-term and transformational pro-social policy changes are embedded by (sometimes unconscious) ideological conversion through example.
BellaD suggests the idea of mandating that the house be sold back to the State if it is subsequently sold. That sounds like a good idea and an extra level of protection, but I think it can be just as easily overturned by a RW government as can the promise to build 3 for every 1 sold. And there is not only RW perfidy to worry about. Policies such as Labour's are like potential honeypots for opportunists, wide-boys, spivs and speculators all sniffing out a loophole or pathway to easy self-enrichment. Just expect it, and where possible, regulate and prosecute the crap out of them.
Individual tenants bought their homes, and then many (especially in the 90s) on-sold – privately – to maximize the capital gain.
Hipkins has said that the tenant, when he purchased the house, would purchase at a price determined by an independent valuer, who would presumably include any capital gain in the purchase price.
McNulty is a good unit but there's several hundred thousand New Zealanders ekeing life solely off NZSuper and nothing else, who just need security in a flat frankly till they die.
Just keep building public flats Labour.
Wait until you hear about permanently disabled people who get $130/week less than super, most of whom have to wait a lot longer to die.
That policy at first sight seemed very much like Margaret Thatcher's decision to allow Brits renting council (aka 'state') houses, to buy them, which many did, back in the late 1970s. Obviously Thatcher's idea was to get rid of as many council houses as possible without building any more. I appreciate that isn't the motive for the NZLP, but it could end up the same way if the 3 to 1 ratio of new builds didn't take place. I think the priority should be to increase the number of state rentals, rented at a fair rate and encourage anything that will keep the increase in the value of private homes within inflation.
Ah, so Labour has discovered its inner Thatcherite.
Seriously: if aping Satan Herself is Labour's conception of addressing the housing crisis, then colour me disappointed. My British grandparents literally paid rent on the council house for decades because they refused to take part in the scheme.
[I assume it was a mistake typing your e-mail in the field for user handle. Please be more careful next time – Incognito]
Mod note
In my daily work as a budgeter I have yet to meet a Kainga Ora tenant with the financial capacity to service a mortgage of at least $500,000. Kainga Ora tenants who do eventually get reasonable jobs are usually moved on to private housing once their income gets over a certain level.
You learn something new every day.
https://kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Publications/Home-Ownership-Products-Quarterly-Report/Home-Ownership-Products-as-at-31-June-2026.pdf
2,444 First Home Loan approvals and 1,016 First Home Loan settlements in Q2 of 22026.