While markets provide housing well for many people, it has long been acknowledged in developed countries that there is a role for government in ensuring that certain sectors of the population are well housed. In New Zealand, the state has provided housing since at least the 1930s, assisting people whose poverty or other issues would otherwise leave them homeless in a purely market-based system.

However, New Zealand currently has significantly less state or social housing – a term that includes NGO housing that attracts state subsidies – than the developed-country average. This country also provides less social housing than it did thirty years ago, relative to population.

On both sides of politics, there is an acknowledgement that more social housing is needed. It is not clear, however, how best to deliver it. There are concerns that New Zealand social housing is delivered more expensively, and to a lower quality, than it should be, and compares poorly to examples overseas.

IDEA’s research will take a comprehensive look at the system for providing housing to those most in-need. It will examine existing delivery processes, the balance between state and NGO provision, and current costs and quality levels. From this research will emerge a powerful and wide-ranging set of recommendations that will look to transform the way that housing is provided to the most vulnerable Kiwis.