Our major housing programmes
Kāinga Ora invests in a range of programmes to meet the housing needs of New Zealanders. Our biggest contributions are through the provision of public and supported housing, followed by the supply of affordable homes and land for market housing.
The following high-level overview of commitments in these categories show this:
- We invest across the housing continuum to achieve housing outcomes for New Zealanders.
- Our biggest contributions are through the provision of public and supported housing.
- We also contribute to the supply of affordable homes and land for affordable and market housing.
- Our focus for our construction intentions is on public and supported housing, and also new builds.
Public housing - Housing provided to an individual or a family who is eligible for the income-related rent subsidy (IRRS), for as long as they need it.
State housing - Is a type of public housing. This is provided by Kāinga Ora, with dedicated staff who look after our state housing customers and the homes they live in.
Supported housing - Publicly funded housing and other services that are essential to the wellbeing of the customer. Kāinga Ora leases homes to service providers to be used for supported housing including transitional housing and community group housing.
New build - A newly built home the Kāinga Ora purchases from a private developer. These homes are generally bought when construction is completed.
Affordable rental - Long term rental accommodation, provided at discounted rents. Currently, Kāinga Ora only provides rental accommodation to people eligible for IRRS (public housing), or who were eligible for IRRS when they first rented the home.
Assisted home ownership - A way of progressively owning a home, also known as shared equity. This is when a household owns part of a home and a third party (e.g. a housing provider or the Crown) owns the rest. Over time the household can buy back the portion owned by the third party. Currently Kāinga Ora does not provide homes for assisted home ownership.
Market affordable homes - Homes produced to sell at KiwiBuild price points or other affordable housing products. Includes land sold to builders with a requirement to build affordable housing within a set timeframe.
Market rental - The provision of long term rental accommodation. Currently, Kāinga Ora only provides rental accommodation to people who are eligible for IRRS (public housing), or were eligible for IRRS when they first rented the home.
Marketing home ownership - New homes that are built by Kāinga Ora’s build partners and sold on the open housing market. This occurs through Kāinga Ora’s land development projects to help achieve a balanced mix of housing options.
IRRS - The income-related rent subsidy (IRRS), where the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development helps pay a portion of the tenant’s rental payment.
Frequently asked questions
Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities is sharing our future work programme for the construction of public and supported homes (construction planning intentions), including new builds.
We have begun by publishing the first high-level view of this information, which we plan to update 6 monthly. Over time, intentions will be extended to include information on our retrofit programme, through which we’re upgrading some of our older homes.
Sharing data on our future public and supported home construction work, including new builds, is part of our commitment to:
- be more transparent about our activities
- enable the construction industry, iwi/rōpū Māori, and local and central government partners, to plan ahead with greater certainty.
It’s part of our efforts to work more collaboratively with the construction sector – as outlined in Building Momentum - our construction plan for future homes. It’s also part of the leadership role Kāinga Ora has as New Zealand’s largest client of residential building services in supporting construction industry transformation.
Our intent is to allow our current construction partners to have certainty today and plan for the future, as well as enabling future partners the opportunity to engage with us on upcoming programmes of work. Publishing half yearly construction intentions also helps Kāinga Ora to meet our commitments to early and meaningful engagement with the communities we work in.
Download:
- Building Momentum - our construction plan for future homes [PDF, 4.9 MB]
- Development and construction matters bulletin
Some of the benefits we envisage include:
- Forward-planning, understanding of risk and investment certainty
- Identification of resource or skills gaps, and ways to address these
- Increased certainty boosting opportunities for innovation
- Improved opportunities for collaboration and partnership
- Capacity partnering agreements for supply of product and / or services at scale.
In our first release of information, we have shared the following on construction starting from 2021-2024 by calendar year:
- Location: the region where we intend to build
- Status: what stage the project is at - in planning, in consenting and procurement, and under construction
- Scale and plan: the number of homes at each stage and when we plan to start construction
- Building type: houses, traditional apartments or 2- and 3-level walk-up apartment buildings.
Further construction projects may be added into this data, particularly in the 2023-2024 years as budgets are confirmed through our annual budgeting process. Current government settings fund Kāinga Ora to grow its housing portfolio through to 2024.
Volumes shown are limited to construction planned and budgeted over the next 4 years from the start of the current year. Volumes are limited to redevelopment and construction on land which Kāinga Ora owns today or intends to procure in the future. They also show housing units, rather than the number of projects.
Dates shown indicate when construction work starts, rather than finishes.
Indicative investment value does not represent the entire value of a public housing project. Rather it indicates the proportion costs that relate to our intended construction and development activity in a particular region, and is subject to budgets being confirmed in future years.
Kāinga Ora updates its planned investment activities annually through its budgeting process and as required during the year. The information presented will be updated every 6 months to best reflect current activities and settings.
Kāinga Ora engages on its construction projects within the communities it operates. As per our enabling legislation, we are establishing systems and processes that allow us to effectively seek, and act on, feedback from communities on our projects and activities at an early stage.
While this data gives the projected number of housing units planned for a region, the specific projects that make up those numbers are fluid. Projects can, and do, accelerate and decelerate depending on a range of factors, which include community input.
In future releases, we are exploring how we can add to this information with more detail:
- Location: the city within the region and the suburb
- Building type: apartments four storeys and above
- Status: when we plan to issue Request for Pricing (RFP), size of project, timing of resource consent applications
From mid-2021 we are planning to increase the depth of this information using online and interactive tools. We intend to share information on work we have in planning, what volume of work is forward committed through multi-year procurement arrangements, and work available for tender in the future.
Later we’ll include:
- complex projects and our retrofit programme, through which we’re upgrading some of our older homes
- Multi-unit remediation projects
- Estimated dates for resource consent applications.
Page updated: 24 September 2021