Quarter of households rely on government housing support
Photo:
Unsplash / Blake Wheeler
A quarter of all households rely on some form of Government support to keep the roofs over their head, and one economist says it's a clear sign that a more cohesive housing strategy is needed.
Data from the Ministry of Social Development and Ministry for Housing and Urban Development show just under 377,193 households receive the accommodation supplement, which is available to help with rent and mortgage costs.
Another 107,568 receive temporary additional support and special benefits. Some of those households will receive both the accommodation supplement and temporary support.
Just over 6300 people are in transitional housing, 86,454 are getting income-related rent subsidies, which are paid by the ministry to public housing landlords and 598 are getting the emergency housing special needs grant.
In total in New Zealand, there are about 1.2 million households living in homes they own and just under 566,000 renting households.
Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the numbers were equal to three-quarters of renting households, or a quarter of total households.
About 25,000 households are receiving the accommodation supplement to help with mortgage payments.
Child Poverty Action Group spokesperson Isaac Gunson said the data should "set off alarm bells in the Beehive".
He said it showed how unstable housing was for children.
"These are not just numbers, they are whānau doing everything right but still being failed by a system where incomes have not kept up with the cost of living. Many are raising children while living with the daily stress of rising rents, insecure housing, and the fear of eviction.
"Every child deserves a warm, dry, secure home, but the scale of need has long outstripped supply. Thousands of families across Aotearoa need affordable, high-quality housing, and they needed it years ago.
"Councils and central government must take shared responsibility for ensuring growth delivers well-connected, high-quality, affordable homes, not just more houses. When rents rise faster than incomes, more tamariki fall into hardship.
"Stats NZ reports that between June 2020 and June 2024, average housing costs rose by 31 percent. Over the same period, average disposable income rose by just 24 percent."
He said there needed to be more public and community housing, as well as higher incomes.
"Families need a permanent fix, not temporary top-ups."
Housing Minister Chris Bishop said it was evidence that the housing crisis was costly for households, and very costly for the government.
"It is precisely why we need this Government's Going for Housing Growth plan."
The accommodation supplement alone costs the Government about $2 billion a year.
Eaqub said the way households were being supported was not working well but it was hard to unwind.
"If you take it away you literally create more poverty… these are not well off people. It's not like the subsidies are generous and as a result they're somehow in an extremely positive position. These are not actually good subsidies because they're not coordinated to create good long-term solutions."
He said there needed to be a way to encourage affordable housing supply that was more than giving subsidies.
"We have to say we're spending this money… is there some way we could also encourage more housing to be built that remains in the pool of affordable housing?"
He said the payments were pushing rents higher than they would otherwise be. Earlier, research from the University of Auckland showed the accommodation supplement was
not making rents more affordable
.
An increase in crowding in New Zealand households also reflected the unaffordability of homes, he said.
"If you look at household size in New Zealand, it hasn't been going down as much as it should for a population that's aging," Eaqub said.
"The subsidy deals with the necessity of helping people have shelter… but is there a coordinated approach that ensures increasing rental house supply that remains affordable over time? The answer is no. So, much of public policy is not just one thing, it's the coordination across many things. You should help people in poverty but if you don't coordinate your approaches all you do is create a subsidy that gets bigger and bigger over time without any meaningful improvement in supply."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
25 minutes ago
- RNZ News
30 percent of people seeking help are doing so for the first time - NZ Food Network charity
New data from Stats NZ shows average household costs went up 6.2 per cent in the last year. Photo: LDR / Alka Prasad A food charity says many New Zealanders are asking for help for the very first time. The New Zealand Food Network said food insecurity had gotten worse since Covid-19 and donations were only meeting about 65 percent of the need. Chief executive Gavin Findlay said the charity, which this week celebrated its fifth anniversary, now supported about 500,000 people a month. "It is tough, we are funded to a certain level of support we can give and we know anecdotally through our network that we're only meeting about 65 percent of the need that the frontline are seeing ," he said. "Everybody's seeing more demand , we've got organisations that would normally deal with 50 to 100 people a day are now doing 220 a day. That's not uncommon throughout the country." He said about 30 percent of people seeking help were doing so for the very first time. "Now we're seeing people who have never reached out for food support before, we're seeing dual-income households reaching out that have never done before," Findlay said. "On lots of occasions people have exhausted their means of support, whether it be their own financial resources or their family or network, and they're just now in situations where they need external help." Findlay said asking for help could be very difficult for people. "Asking for help can be a real challenge, in the environment we're in now it's a tough gig to put out your hand and say 'I just can't support myself and my family, do you have some food to help me with?' It's a tough environment," he said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- RNZ News
Luxon to tell National faithful country is 'turning the corner'
Luxon to tell National faithful "we're turning the corner" National leader Christopher Luxon. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro National Party members are gathering in Christchurch to cap off a week in which MPs attempted to steer public minds back towards the government's cost of living policies. Members will also farewell a party stalwart, with former president Peter Goodfellow retiring from National's board of directors. While leader Christopher Luxon will be speaking to the converted, he will be acutely aware the cost of living has become front of mind . Earlier this week, he was asked what his message to the party faithful would be. "Look, they know it's been a tough time, they know that we're turning the corner," Luxon said. "But really ... this country's got great potential and a great future ahead of it, and we've just got to keep working at it." National's deputy leader, Nicola Willis, said the conference would be focused on the steps the government was taking to make the country "an easier, better place to do business, to hire people, to create well paying jobs". "It is our job as a government not to moan about the things we can't control, but to focus on how we can make things better here in New Zealand, and we're very proud of the efforts we're making," she said. It is a stark contrast to this time last year, where Luxon's message ahead of the first conference since National returned to government was its focus on action and delivery . It shows just how much the cost of living crisis is lingering, and National has spent the week attempting to convince the public it has got it under control. With no announcement to make at this week's post-Cabinet press conference (bar the card surcharge ban, which had already been announced), Luxon and Willis gave a more than 10-minute address about the economy and cost of living, and actions the government had taken. "The most important thing we can do to make you better off is to double-down on our long-term economic plan," Luxon said. Willis used her speech to remind people of National's tax changes, FamilyBoost policy and a falling Official Cash Rate. It prompted Labour to accuse the government of "more spin than a front-load washing machine" . The latest Ipsos Issues Monitor has Labour in front of National as the party New Zealanders consider most able to handle the cost of living, despite releasing no substantive policy since the election. In 2023, National won 38.06 percent of the party vote, but since then has failed to poll above that. Recent polls have had National in the low thirties, with some showing the left bloc would have enough numbers to form a government. Other polls give the coalition the numbers to form a government, but only just. National party ministers will hold panels on health, education, law and order, agriculture, and the economy and cost of living. Members will also elect board positions. Long-serving board member and former party president Peter Goodfellow will be retiring from the board. Goodfellow was president from 2009 to 2022 before stepping down but remaining on the board. ANZCO Foods founder Sir Graeme Harrison, who joined the National board in 2021, has also decided to retire. Current board member Rachel Bird is up for re-election. Under National's constitution and rules, board members serve three years and then retire. They can then be eligible for re-election. Craig Carr, Andrew von Dadelszen and Edgar Wilson have also put their names forward for the vacancies. Party president Sylvia Wood and board members Jannita Pilisi, Stefan Sunde and David Ryan are not up for re-election, and so will remain on the board. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- RNZ News
Pushing our buttons to loosen our wallets
There's a suggestion that the cost-of-living crisis has taken the excitement out of supermarket campaigns. Photo: Supplied It's child pester-power versus high-end kitchenware versus 'just lower prices' at New Zealand supermarkets right now. The offerings couldn't be more different. New World shoppers collecting stickers to grab cast iron cookware , Woolworths giving out tin Disney Discs for kids to ... well, it's not really clear what kids do with them once they have them. At Pak'nSave, it's just business as usual - it doesn't do giveaways. In the past, these campaigns have created social media frenzies, with New World's knife promotion, miniature shops, and little gardens being big hits. During the so-called 'Summer of Smeg', shoppers took to Trade Me to complete their full set of knives. There were 39,000 searches for them on the site in the seven days after the promotion's launch. But there's a suggestion that the cost-of-living crisis has taken the excitement out of the offerings. Reddit users are divided between wanting New World's knife promotion back and just wanting lower grocery prices instead. "It feels to me like these promos ... people are getting less excited about them as they go along," says RNZ's money correspondent Susan Edmunds. "When we started off with the Smeg knives and the little gardens and stuff, it seemed like everyone was talking about it and swapping things, and there was lots of chatter about it online, and I'm not seeing that as much now. " Is the thought of some flash cookware enough to change a shopper's behaviour, or get them in the door of a different supermarket? Probably not, says Edmunds. "We're such creatures of habit when it comes to supermarket shopping that this is more likely to be rewarding loyalty with people who are already shopping there. "There wouldn't be that many people who are going 'oooh, Woolworths or New World'? and I'll be swayed to New World by the Smeg giveaway. But I suppose that would happen if you had one on one side of the road and one on the other." Kids' pester-power is probably worth a lot. "As more of us shop online, that's less of a factor, because kids don't get any say on where you're online shopping. But I suppose if you've got your kids nagging you to go to a particular shop, then that probably would sway you .... but people are so committed usually to 'their' supermarket that they're comfortable with and know where everything is." Having said that, her kids are collecting the Disney Discs and she's "finding them all over the house - probably Smeg dishes would be more useful". She says the New World tie-up with Smeg is helping the higher-end brand to get established. "This will help their brand recognition. People will start to get more familiar with it and maybe feel more comfortable if they're shopping, and they maybe want a fridge, and they see a Smeg fridge. This all helps with that." The cookware being offered at New World doesn't seem to feature in retail stores, although there's plenty of similar, and expensive, equipment. "But not that stuff, so I feel like this is probably a promotional play for Smeg to try and broaden its ... potential market, and build up its brand name, and it's got the power of New World behind it. Everyone loves these New World promotions, so it's a win for them [Smeg] from a marketing perspective, and it's a win for New World because you get these quite high-end products at a relatively cheap price ... and then I guess it's a win for consumers who get to stock up on - what is it - utensil holders and baking dishes and all sorts." Dr Saira Raza Khan (left) and Dr Pragea Putra (right) Photo: Alexia Russell Dr Pragea Putra is a lecturer in marketing at the University of Auckland Business School. His shopping behaviour is currently being dictated by the demands of his seven-year-old son, who is collecting the Disney Discs from Woolworths. He tells The Detail , while New World tends to attract shoppers who are a bit more established and value quality, and want nice things in their kitchen, Woolworths is tapping into the family market - parents with kids in tow. But he thinks Woolworths has missed a marketing trick with its failure to emphasise that the discs it's giving away aren't plastic - they're recyclable aluminium - and that there are games you can play with them instead of just collecting them to look at. Dr Putra's colleague, Dr Saira Raza Khan, looks at a different form of button-pushing - she's an expert in consumer behaviour. Her research has looked at the best way to get public health messages through, and it suggests that consumers are sick of having the fear factor used against them to get them to change their behaviour. Dr Khan says gratitude is an underused, but powerful, motivator and health practitioners should be looking at it more often. Check out how to listen to and fol low The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
