I noted previously how the New Zealand Labour Party’s promise to “build 100,000 affordable homes across the country” was already shaping up as an epic failure due to:
- the government changing the program from “building” to “facilitating” the delivery of 100,000 affordable dwellings, meaning that NZ taxpayers would merely ‘underwrite’ many dwellings that would have been built anyway, thereby protecting developer margins;
- the government increasing the price threshold on a Kiwibuild 3 bedroom home to $650,000, which is unaffordable to more than half of Auckland households; and
- the government announcing a ridiculously high income cap of $180,000 for would-be Kiwibuild homeowners – a level that is more than twice the average household income – thus turning the program into “socialism for the rich”.
Last month, Interest.co.nz reported that KiwiBuild homes are likely to be beyond the reach of many first home buyers. Now, ex-Labour Party MP, Peter Dunne, has described Kiwibuild as “one of Edmund Blackadder’s cunning plans”:
