State Housing in NZ

Extracts from the book: We Call it Home - A History of State Housing in New Zealand by Ben Schrader.

For more than a century the state has provided rental homes for tens of thousands of New Zealanders unable to afford a home of their own. State housing has made a huge contribution to our national life. 

Labour government's first state house in 1937 was at 12 Fife Lane, Miramar, Wellington. The first tenants of the first state house were David and Mary McGregor. Besides the Prime Minister, the opening day ceremony saw 300 others stomp though their home, muddying floors and fingerprinting freshly painted fixtures. 

David McGregor was a tram driver for the Wellington City Council. For his efforts he received a wage of £4 7s 9d per week. Out of this total he paid the state £1 10s 3d in rent, just over a third of his pay. 

In the early 1950s the National government introduced measures enabling state tenants to purchase their home. The McGregors took up the offer and bought, later declaring it to be 'our little bit of New Zealand'. When the McGregors died in the early 1980s, their son David sold the home back to the state. In 1983 the New Zealand Historic Places Trust registered it as a place of 'very great social historical significance'.

Building Community: Community has many different meanings. People might live in a particular community, but have little contact with their neighbours, preferring instead to pursue their social life elsewhere. Others in the same street might be best friends and spend hours 'chewing the fat' over a back fence. Planners of state housing communities encouraged the second model, in which neighbours would become friends and where locals would look out for one another.

The essential aim of state housing: to provide suburban homes for families, a place where children could grow up in safe and spacious surroundings, away from the dangers of the inner city. This guided state housing policy from the beginning. The houses built under Premier Richard Seddon's workers' dwellings scheme from 1905 were targeted at working families, invariably nuclear families: two parents with children. Successive governments continued the practice, believing the nuclear family to be the 'foundation of the nation', a foundation that required the buttressing of the state to remain grounded and true.

For low-paid workers and beneficiaries, making ends meet has always been a constant struggle. Unexpected bills will often blow budgets and asking for charity can be degrading. A lack of money also places strain on personal and other relationships, sometimes causing their breakdown. Life can be even tougher for those without a home of their own. The private rental market is often expensive – particularly in times of short supply – and sometimes discriminates against the poor and ethnic minorities. People in this situation often have to accept sub-standard accommodation or squeeze into a place too small for their needs.

Securing a state house tenancy has never been easy. Demand has nearly always outstripped supply. This was especially true after the Second World War, when returning soldiers flooded the market. Unable to secure a home of their own, thousands of people were forced to rent rooms in squalid boarding houses or else move in with relatives or friends, placing severe strains on personal relationships. Many desperate people turned to their MPs for help.

In providing subsidised rental housing to those who can't afford, or who face discrimination in, the private housing market, the state has raised the living standards of thousands of New Zealanders. Yet critics of state housing have long claimed that subsidised rents are unfair because state tenants are privileged in comparison with their counterparts in the private sector, who pay market rents. The introduction of full market rents in the 1990s was designed to overcome this disparity, but its implementation increased the struggle many state tenants faced to make ends meet.

The design of state houses has been fodder for armchair and professional critics since the beginning. Detractors slagged the first workers' dwellings for being 'too swell' and called for simpler shelters. Half a century later the complaint was the exact opposite: that new state houses were stingy, shoddy and slum-like. But who was right and who was wrong often came down to one's political perspective. Right-leaning critics have asserted that it's not the state's role to build workers 'luxury' homes, whereas those to the left have argued that raising housing standards raises living standards.

There is little doubt that the state houses of the 1930s and 40s raised the standard of housing in New Zealand. (Interestingly, the recent 'leaky building crisis' has seen some homebuyers spurn modern homes and seek these ex-state houses knowing that they were very well built.) Less certain is the legacy of what followed. Escalating building costs in the 1950s led the National government to lower the standard of new state housing. The results were not pretty. In places like South Auckland and Porirua, uniformity of design, the dominance of poor households, and a lack of services and amenities, eventually created the ghetto communities Seddon and Savage had so wanted to avoid.

Subsequent governments have tried to correct these mistakes. From the 1970s new state housing areas were set alongside (more costly) private developments and closer to workplaces, transport links and other facilities. New housing designs were also introduced to take account of changing living arrangements, such as the 'family' (or dining) room, now adjacent to the kitchen, but distinct from the living room.

Few designs, however, accommodated the practices of those outside the dominant Pakeha culture. One Maori tenant, long accustomed to the separation of food from washing areas, recalled her horror at finding the only place she could wash clothes was the kitchen sink: 'these houses were designed by English people who are happy to wash their pants in the sink. Well I wasn't going to be happy washing my babies nappies in there'.

More recently, Housing New Zealand Corporation has promoted the construction of state houses that better reflect the increasingly diverse cultural needs of its tenants. Its Maori and Pacific design guides, released in 2002, are intended to alert designers to the cultural beliefs and practices that they need to consider when building state houses for these groups.