Hundreds trade tents, cars and overcrowded houses for warm, stable homes

Regional New Zealand's biggest social housing development to date has opened in Whangārei, allowing more than 300 people to trade tents, cars or overcrowded houses for warm and stable homes.

The Kainga Ora development, on Kauika Road in the Avenues, has a total of 95 apartments and standalone houses.

It was designed to help meet the city's huge need for one- and two-bedroom homes.

The $75 million project was built in stages with the first families moving in in September 2025 and the last 39 homes completed this week.

Kāinga Ora Northland director Jeff Murray said many of the roughly 320 people who would live in the complex had been homeless and staying in emergency or transitional housing.

"Having a safe place to live gives people stability and a chance to plan for the future. This is a big step forward for them and their families," he said.

"We'll be taking people who've been living in tents or in cars or perhaps in very overcrowded housing conditions, and providing them with a warm, dry house. So it's going to be a real life-changer in terms of the health of their children. If kids are in good health, they're far more likely to attend school. Housing stability also helps people get into work."

Murray said the new homes were close to shops, schools, public transport and health services, reducing transport costs in a time of sky-high fuel costs.

The homes were also warm and easy to heat, keeping power bills down.

Even saving $20 a week on fuel or power could make a big difference to people on low incomes, he said.

The new tenants included solo dad Tamati Herewini-Murray and his two-year-old whāngai son Ngawati, who had previously been sharing a rented room in an overcrowded house.

The two-bedroom apartment was their first real home.

"For me and my son it means stability, it means affordable rent, it means a home that we can call ours. It gives us that stability we need in life to do the things that we love, that we need to do," he said.

"It means giving my son a stable home, where he's loved and supported and cared for, where he learns and grows, where he's comfortable, where he's safe, so that he's good to go for his daily duties of going to daycare and later to school," Herewini-Murray said.

Murray said the complex also had a community centre, a communal garden and a children's play area.

Fourteen ground-floor homes had been designed for people with physical disabilities or mobility issues.

It was already developing a great sense of community, he said.

Murray said more than 300 new state homes had been built in Whangārei in the past three years, with another 59 either contracted or under construction.

However, he said the Kauika Road project could not be built today under new spending rules for Kainga Ora, which required costs to be in line with market valuations.

A report last year by Sir Bill English was highly critical of Kainga Ora for its ballooning debt and paying above-market rates for land and buildings.

In a major reset in July last year, around 40 Kainga Ora housing projects around Northland - totalling around 450 homes - were cancelled.

As previously reported, the bulk of those were in Whangārei but four projects in the city were continuing, as was a six-home project in Kaitāia. One more development was proposed in Whangārei's Whau Valley.

Every project outside Whangārei and Kaitāia was scrapped, including controversial developments planned in Ruakākā and on Kerikeri's main road. Plans for new homes in Kaikohe, Kawakawa and Dargaville were also halted.

However, Murray said he viewed some of those projects as delayed rather than cancelled.

The agency had retained the land that offered the best options for redevelopment, and sold properties that would no longer work financially.

It had always been difficult building social housing outside Whangārei and Kerikeri because of the income from rent relative to the cost of development, he said.

The total number of homes owned by Kainga Ora nationwide was now capped around the current 78,000, although about 2000 ageing state homes were set to be upgraded or replaced annually for the next few years.

There were currently 646 people on the state housing waiting list in the Whangārei District alone. Of those, 509 were waiting for a one- or two-bedroom home.

The Kauika Road complex was designed by Phoenix Properties and built by Loveridge Builders over a three-year period. About 120 tradespeople worked on the project.

Local hapū Te Parawhau was also closely involved.

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