One task was to identify the different kinds of housing in the area: private, community, council and state housing. We found there was no state housing in Blueskin Bay.
Kainga Ora confirmed that between Purakaunui and Waikouaiti there was not a single state house. We asked about demand and the size of the waiting list for our area. The response was startling: they didn’t have a wait list as there was no state housing to wait for.
With no demand, there was therefore no state housing building programme planned for the east. It was a completely ridiculous, circular logic.
Kainga Ora is explicitly responsible for identifying and meeting housing need. Yet, its waiting list system was designed in a way that made invisible the need in Dunedin’s eastern communities.
This statistical erasure had real consequences. People, especially older residents who had lived their entire lives there, were forced to leave their support networks and communities when they needed state housing, or pay hiked rents.
Kainga Ora’s current programme of asset sales is systematically replicating this problem, exacerbating the housing crisis across the city.
This fire sale is driven by the government’s budget preferences and justified by the disingenuous "independent" report led by Bill English. That report leans heavily on sanitised language like "social investment", "choice", and "innovation"— all synonyms for privatisation and profit-making developers.
This is exactly who the government is trying to attract. On its Urban Development and Delivery website, where it advertises its sales programme, it boasts that "we’ve done the hard work", noting the public has paid for clearing land, upgrading infrastructure and consulting stakeholders.
The public has funded this increased land value, with no guarantee that developers who buy the public land will deliver affordable or state housing in return. We see this play out across the region: five properties for sale in Invercargill, one in Balclutha and in Port Chalmers, a large section where state houses were demolished with a promise to rebuild. Now, that land is for sale.
The community campaign to stop the Port Chalmers sale is a crucial fight for secure, affordable rental housing in Dunedin. It is part of a broader nationwide movement to protect state housing and housing security in Aotearoa.
While the government relies on its own report, a powerful alternative exists. "A People’s Review of Kāinga Ora: In Defence of Public Housing" is a collaborative report by researchers, advocates and frontline workers. It argues what we know to be true: that public housing is the essential mainstay of decent, stable and genuinely affordable homes.
The report’s findings are grounded in the real-life experiences of those on wait lists, in state homes and in the precarious private rental market.
A key difference between the government’s policy and the People’s Review is the government’s narrow focus on Kainga Ora being a landlord rather than a builder. The private market has categorically failed to provide decent, stable and affordable homes for ordinary people. The state needs a stronger role in the ownership and provision of housing, not just the management of tenants.
The report describes how the "true wait list" extends far beyond the official wait list, encompassing households on the accommodation supplement who cannot afford private rents.
Just this week it was reported there is a huge increase in households receiving the maximum accommodation allowance because their housing costs are so high. Nearly half received the maximum payment.
The private sector has not met this housing need, despite decades of government insistence it would, and no amount of slick advertising from Kainga Ora will change that.
The People’s Review states clearly: when the government sells land in state housing neighbourhoods to private developers, it leads to gentrification and a permanent loss of public land. That means every section needs defending.
The erosion of public housing is not inevitable — it is a policy choice. The example of Blueskin Bay exposes a system designed to fail, in that case where need is ignored because it remains officially unrecorded. And in the Port Chalmers case, practical action is essential.
The first priority is to engage. ActionStation is supporting local community campaigns with petitions to Kainga Ora and other outreach tools.
The second, challenge every sale. Supporting local campaigns, like the community in Port Chalmers, is really critical. The fight matters.
Third, amplify alternative evidence. We can use reports like the People’s Review to discredit the government’s privatisation agenda and prove the demand for affordable public housing.
Finally, advocate for building, not just managing. Central government must refocus Kainga Ora’s mandate on constructing new state homes, not merely managing a declining portfolio.
The future of our communities depends on defending every section of public land and insisting that housing is a right, not a commodity.
■ Metiria Stanton Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
