Bryce Wilkinson: NZ Initiative Senior Fellow on a new report reckons taxpayers are getting a raw deal on state housing

Kainga Ora's large-scale ownership of state houses may not be the most effective way to provide housing help to Kiwis.

A report by The New Zealand Initiative lists several reasons why government ownership can be problematic and wasteful.

Its cost structure appears to be approaching double the usual private landlord benchmark, based on indicative calculations.

NZ Initiative Senior Fellow Dr Bryce Wilkinson told Ryan Bridge the Government has a poor track record and seemingly can't manage all 77-thousand housing units.

He says tenants are often getting into large rent arrears and causing problems for their neighbours - and Kainga Ora don't respond quickly enough.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
She report reckons taxpayers are getting a raw deal on
state housing. The New Zealand Initiative says King or Order
seventy seven thousand homes. Yes, we own seventy seven thousand
homes cost us twice as much as the private sector,
and they're asking why do we bother owning them. Dr
Bryce Wilkinson's the report author, joins us this morning, Bryce,
good morning, it is good morning. What exactly is costing
us twice as much.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's operating the seventy seven thousand houses, So that's repairs
and maintenance, staff support and sort of turning over tenants
with the new tenants, organizing new houses, that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
How have you come to that number? How have you
compared it to a private number?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I went on. I found that there is a real
estate room called Lodge real Estate which does a lot
of helping landlords and buying and selling houses. And this
had indiccause of benchmarking COSTRUC for private landlords for reading

(01:02):
our properties. And so that's what I've used to get
the numbers for King Aura. I've used the numbers in
their annual, the last published ANU report, which is the
one for twenty twenty three to twenty four. And what
I say in the report is that it would be
good if Caning and Aura itself was commissioned to hire

(01:26):
independent experts to do its own authoritatia more authoritative Beachmark
comparisons because it's got more disaggregated data than it publishes
in the annual reports. So you're saying a better job
than I.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Dont you're saying well, and you're saying that the private
sector does a better job than the government does in
terms of the cost. What do you want to do?
Then sell them to community to third parties.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yes, there's an extent of survey of high over these
countries do it, and there's an enormous diversity, So there's
housing associations. They're very prevalent in some of the European countries.
We've got we're getting that way a bit ourselves of
community housing providers. We could do a lot more of that.

(02:13):
The UK transferred ownership to a lot of the tenants
who are occupying them, over one million homes there, so
that's another option. But the important thing is to empower
the tenants and if they get captured and caused in
the state House, the neighbors might be very unsavory. Peers

(02:34):
might not be doing being done, and that sort of
trapped here. If they can just move, take the money
and move, find another land in order, a housing association
or CHP, then they've got more options, more in control
of their own lives, all.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Right, Bryce, appreciate that, Doctor Bryce Wilkinson, who's the report
author from the New Zealand Initiative. For more from early
edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live news Talks. It'd be
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