Housing

UnitedFuture shares the kiwi dream of home ownership. We work to achieve affordable, secure, warm, dry housing. We are acutely aware of the difficulties that first-time buyers face in purchasing their first home, and are committed to pursuing policies to help people into the housing market.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Encourage home ownership by allowing working families to capitalise their Working For Families entitlements to help purchase or build a home, extend existing homes, or increase equity in a home. Those who choose to receive their payments in this way as a lump sum will be entitled to a small additional incentive to acknowledge the savings in administrative costs for the government.
• Investigate alternative local body funding arrangements with the aim of abolishing rates on domestic and commercial properties.
• Continue to sell state houses with very high valuations (some are over $1million) to purchase two, three or four other properties to be used as state houses
• Extend the provision of community housing
• Review Housing NZ tenancies on an annual basis to ensure that the occupants still meet the criteria and to ensure that housing stock is fairly allocated, and encourage long-term tenants into home ownership.
• Strengthen legislation to allow Housing NZ to evict problematic tenants more easily.
• Extend the existing scheme in which Work and Income NZ deducts Housing NZ rentals directly from benefits to include private sector rentals.
• Promote co-housing as an option for older people to join together to create and manage their own accommodation
• Adopt a national strategy, including private sector funding, to insulate all NZ homes to at least 1977 standards, prioritising the homes of those with low and fixed incomes.
• Require all dwellings sold to be assessed for energy efficiency (e.g. insulation, double glazing, heating methods, use of solar energy) and given a standardised energy efficiency rating.