No excuses for building delays - Williams

Housing New Zealand should stop playing the blame game and admit it is at fault for delays to its building programme, Labour’s Associate Housing spokesperson Poto Williams says. "HNZ was supposed to have built 2000 new homes by December. It has only completed a third of that number. "Meanwhile kids living in old, dilapidated and run-down HNZ homes are getting sick and dying. "The Government has repeatedly talked up the ‘progress’ being made in its state house building programme, and its desire is to ‘unlock the latent value in our properties, to transform, regenerate and intensify our portfolio to create world-class healthy, vibrant, sustainable and enduring mixed-use communities’. "It is obviously not walking the talk. "The Government promised it would boost stock - and in Christchurch it said that meant building a house a day for two years. "It turns out it’s simply selling off houses, not providing new ones. "Housing NZ pays the Government a dividend of several hundred million dollars each year. There is something very wrong when that is not being used to build warm, dry homes for in need Kiwi families," Poto Williams says.