01/06/2026
I've been sitting with today's social housing announcement and I keep coming back to the same thought: this policy has been designed around numbers on a spreadsheet, not around people.
Let me tell you what I see.
Social housing is not where people choose to live — it's where they end up when every other door has closed. The private rental market has already rejected them: their income is too low, their history too complicated, their family too large. For these New Zealanders, social housing is not a stepping stone. It is the floor.
Today the Government decided to charge them more for it. From April next year, minimum rent contributions rise from 25% to 30% of income. For 84,000 households, that's an average of $31 more a week. I want you to think about what $31 means when you have nothing to spare. It doesn't get absorbed. It becomes debt. And debt, for people already at the edge, has consequences that ripple through families for years.
The redesigned needs assessment will funnel the most complex, highest-needs people into social housing — but without any additional funding for the wraparound support that makes tenancies work. We are being asked to house the hardest cases with fewer resources to support them.
And then there are duration limits. The Government's own data shows these people cannot access the private market. Putting a time limit on their tenancy doesn't create a pathway out. It creates a deadline — and on the other side of that deadline is the street.
I also want to speak up for the community housing providers — the charities, trusts, and iwi — who stepped forward when the state couldn't do this alone. They invested their own money, built homes, and signed long-term contracts in good faith. They were not consulted before today's announcement. They find out the same way everyone else does — through the news.
That's a profound breach of trust with organisations that took a risk to help solve a public problem.
Good housing policy creates stability. Stability creates everything else — health, education, employment, family wellbeing. What was announced today undermines all of that, and shifts the cost onto the people and organisations least equipped to bear it.
I'll keep saying this until someone listens.
