City Vision Media release: Government decision to axe housing is short-sighted and destructive

4 July 2025

Kāinga Ora housing site at School Road, Morningside Photo Margi Watson

Quietly and with little publicity, Kāinga Ora has axed 328 much-needed new homes that were to be built across the Albert-Eden, Puketāpapa and Waitematā Local Board areas. Across the same area there are 795 applicants on the Housing Register waiting for a home, families whose hopes for secure housing have been dashed by the coalition government’s policy to sell rather than build. ‘This is not the city Auckland should be. The timing of this short-sighted decision is particularly bad, with ever more people unable to access affordable housing, and the construction sector desperate for work,’ says Patrick Reynolds, candidate for the Waitematā and Gulf ward.

Kāinga Ora moved families out of their state-owned homes with a promise that they could move back to their neighbourhoods once more new homes were built in our communities. Homes that were to be built from the City Centre to Grey Lynn, Pt Chevalier to Morningside, and Mt Roskill to Waikōwhai have now been erased. These new, warm, dry homes were promised to tenants and Local Boards alike to meet the burgeoning wait-list for Aucklanders, to provide for Auckland’s complex housing needs, and to address the growing number of people without homes. Puketāpapa Local Board candidate Soraiya Daud says, ‘There is a great need for more affordable housing in Central Auckland. The decision to stop these builds is short-sighted and actively harms our social fabric.’

City Vision stands for more housing choices, including state-provided homes. Our city desperately needs more homes nearer to where people want to live, and we need those homes to be affordable, stable, healthy and secure. That’s exactly what the axed Kāinga Ora homes would have been. Auckland needs affordable housing on the isthmus to build a fairer, more inclusive city, and the current Government has shown that it has no commitment to building enough Kāinga Ora homes on the isthmus.

In June, Kāinga Ora also announced the sale of sites that were acquired with the promise to build a mix of market, affordable and social housing. On that list is a key site 100m from the new Maungawhau CRL station. Albert-Eden Local Board Deputy Chair and Local Board candidate Margi Watson says, ‘This site is perfectly placed for transit-adjacent development, with easy access to jobs and education.’ In Mt Roskill, the Wesley West project has been ‘indefinitely postponed’, after hundreds of millions have been spent preparing the infrastructure and up to 80 homes have been demolished. If that doesn’t seem bad enough, an additional, undisclosed list of tenanted Kāinga Ora properties are being planned for sale with tenants in some central Auckland homes currently being advised that their homes will now be sold.

In Waitematā, 155 planned new units will not be built, twelve existing homes will be sold off, and opportunities to utilise the Crown land close to the new CRL stations abandoned. ‘The market does not deliver decent affordable housing. We need more family housing in central areas, and homes for seniors to age in place,’ says Waitematā Local Board member and candidate Alex Bonham. 

Margi Watson says, ‘These cuts are destructive to the fabric of our city. The Government is a key player in building housing and community, and they are failing.’ City Vision wants better, and we encourage Aucklanders to contact their MP, Housing Minister Hon Chris Bishop,  Kāinga Ora Board Chair Simon Moutter.

Contact:

Patrick Reynolds  0274 722 388 

City Vision is an alliance of Labour, Greens and community independents working together for progressive change in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Since 1998, City Vision has championed policies that support a liveable, safe, connected, healthy, economically and environmentally sustainable city for all Aucklanders. City Vision stands candidates in the Waitematā, Puketāpapa and Albert-Eden Local Board areas, and the Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa and Waitematā and Gulf Wards.