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250 state houses sitting empty during shortage, Little says

Author
NZN, Newstalk ZB Staff,
Publish Date
Tue, 14 Feb 2017, 4:44PM
Labour leader Andrew Little is on the warpath against the Prime Minister over state houses being left vacant (NZH)
Labour leader Andrew Little is on the warpath against the Prime Minister over state houses being left vacant (NZH)

250 state houses sitting empty during shortage, Little says

Author
NZN, Newstalk ZB Staff,
Publish Date
Tue, 14 Feb 2017, 4:44PM

More than 250 state houses have been sitting empty for over a year as the government tries to sell them, Labour says.

Party leader Andrew Little has official documents showing there are nearly 2500 empty state houses and more than 500 have been empty for over a year.

Of those long-term vacant houses, 254 are empty pending sale.

Others need repairs or upgrades.

"In the middle of a housing shortage, why on earth is (prime minister) Bill English leaving state houses empty... we should be building houses, not leaving the ones we do have vacant," Mr Little said on Tuesday.

"There are nearly 5000 families waiting for state houses, up by more than a third in the past year."

Mr Little says the government's usual excuse is that they are the wrong houses in the wrong places.

"Well, any house would be welcome for kids living in tents... the very least Bill English could do is get those houses filled straight away," he said.

Mr Little questioned Mr English in parliament about the empty houses.

"Why, in the middle of a housing shortage, are more than 250 empty for more than a year as he tried to flog them off?" Mr Little asked.

Mr English: "You would expect, when Housing New Zealand owns one in every 16 houses, they should be selling some of them at any given time so they can renew their stocks."

The prime minister said when it came to meeting serious housing need, the number of houses available was no longer limited to those owned by HNZ.

"We have hundreds, and shortly thousands, of houses supplied by people other than HNZ, and the number of social housing places is increasing steadily."

Mr English said Housing New Zealand has around 68,000 houses and not all are being taken up by clients.

"There's quite a number of those which people in serious housing need will not move into because of the quality of those houses."

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