Housing Minister Phil Twyford says he wants to double the number of state homes Labour promised to build on the campaign trail to 2000. He blamed the previous Government's mass state stock sell off for the country's current levels of homelessness. "There's more and more demand [for state housing] coming out of the woodwork and that's concerning." This would not be means-tested as the Government did not want to set up a "heavy bureaucratic system" around housing, Twyford said. As to where the houses would be built, especially in Auckland, Twyford said he shared agricultural growers' concerns about housing developments being built on fertile growing soil.

Source: Otago Daily Times November 18, 2017 21:45 UTC