Our Home for Life plan will help New Zealanders get into their own homes by establishing a rent-to-buy programme and by creating new opportunities for community housing providers to play a bigger part in solving the housing crisis.
This will give more New Zealanders a fair shot at owning their own home – even when the market is stacked against them – and make sure the community housing sector has the financial and political support to help solve the housing crisis.
For much of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history, governments used their low cost of borrowing to finance affordable homes for New Zealanders. It is time for government to pick up its tools again.
1) Progressive home ownership
As a part of a government-build programme, the Green Party will make 10,000 new homes over ten years available to people who can’t afford a deposit or a normal commercial mortgage, through progressive ownership rent-to-buy arrangements.
Progressive home owners will pay a weekly payment of no more than 30 percent of their income. Part of each payment will be rent to cover the Crown’s costs. The rest will purchase equity shares in the home. Over time, with each regular payment, ownership of the home will transfer from the government to the people who live in it.
Our plan will save people more than $100 a week compared to a commercial mortgage.
This programme will work alongside any government plan to build more affordable homes. It will provide access to affordable, stable housing and get people out of expensive rentals and into their own homes.
2) Working with community housing providers
Community and social housing providers, including iwi, have the skills and experience to play a big part in ending the housing crisis.
Community housing providers will be able to purchase an additional 5,000 newly built, energy efficient homes from the government through the progressive ownership programme. Community housing providers may choose to use these as emergency housing, rent them out as social housing, or sell them to tenants over time using their own rent-to-buy programmes.
Community housing providers will provide a deposit or use private sector finance to pay for part of the initial cost of building new, highly energy efficient homes. The government will fund the remaining stake through Housing New Zealand. Community housing providers will make regular payments to buy out the government’s stake.
3) Innovative housing finance
Investors who want safe, socially responsible investment options can help fix the housing crisis.
To enable the community housing sector to grow and help solve the housing crisis, the government will issue low-interest loans to community housing providers to build new, energy efficient homes. We’ll fund these by supplying long-term partially-guaranteed housing bonds to investors who want to see their money put to use to solve the housing crisis.
This will be in addition to existing community housing funding programmes.
Helping New Zealanders get into their own homes through innovative home ownership models is part of our Confidence and Supply Agreement. We have gained a $400 million fund for progressive home ownership, with details currently being confirmed.
