Kiwibuild is beginning to look more and
more like no more than one of Edmund Blackadder’s cunning plans. While this
week’s controversy about the couple getting the first Kiwibuild home is nothing
like the drama National is making it out to be, it is nevertheless just another
example of the policy’s shifting sands.
It is worth recalling that in its
election policy just one year ago Labour promised that it would “build 100,000
high quality affordable homes over 10 years”. The policy went on to talk about
curbing homelessness through building affordable homes in the $350-450,000
price range. The implication was unambiguous - Labour’s approach was going to
be far more activist than National, and Kiwibuild would be Its primary policy
to deal with homelessness and the housing crisis.
The not unreasonable belief consequently
emerged that Labour would get on top of the housing crisis, in a way that
National never could. Given the general view of the time that National had let
the housing crisis get well away from them, without too many ideas of how to
resolve it, Kiwibuild began to look as though it might just be the fresh approach
needed.
How different things look one year later.
So far, just 18 Kiwibuild homes have been built, and another 447 are on track
for completion by July 2019, leaving a shortfall of 535 on its first year 1,000
homes target. Put another way, a first year achievement rate of just under 47%.
And there has been a subtle but clear rewrite of the Kiwibuild objective.
According to the Kiwibuild website, the objective is now the much more passive
one to “deliver 100,000 homes for first home buyers over the next decade”.
Therefore, in reality Kiwibuild is a very
clever strategy of the government doing very little, but making it look like a
lot, and all the while being able to milk many photo opportunities for
Ministers as the still uncommon achievement of each house being completed
happens.
Meanwhile, the homeless Labour was so
concerned about in the lead up to last year’s election remain homeless, with
not much apparently being done to meet their needs. A specific initiative is
the Sweat Equity programme, but it is only available for 6,400 homes, and is
unlikely to be sufficient to house the many homeless families Labour used to
focus its attention on. In addition, over the next four years the government is
planning to increase the public housing stock by a net 1,000 over the total
projected under the previous government last year, likely to still be less than
the total number currently on housing waiting lists.
Mind you, given its own record on housing
is hardly one to crow about, National is not going to be taken seriously on
this issue for a while yet, making some of its current criticisms a little hard
to take. The public memory is not that short. So, despite the
criticisms, the benefit of the credibility doubt still lies with Labour - just.
Nevertheless, when the marketing awards
are next given out Kiwibuild deserves first prize as a cunning plan, well
marketed, but delivering very little and changing not very much, while all the
time leaving people feeling good about the government’s warmth and kindness.
Not even Blackadder and Baldrick in their heyday could ever have been as
devious.
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