7. Question No. 7—HousingBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Minister of HousingQuestion No. 7—Housing7. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Minister of Housing: How many KiwiBuild houses were built in June 2022 if any and was this more or less than the number of KiwiBuild houses built in January 2022?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Kia orana Mr Speaker. So far 1380 New Zealand families are in KiwiBuild homes and 1223 homes are currently under construction. In the two months the member mentioned as is publicly available on the housing dashboard is zero and the same.Brooke van Velden: Does she stand by her statement I note that January is always the quietest month in the building sector."; if so how does she reconcile that with zero new KiwiBuild homes being built in June?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I reconcile that with the fact that in 2021 Auckland had a number of lockdown periods. This in turn had an impact on building projects particularly groundworks getting under way which typically start in June. I do note of the 1200-odd that are currently under construction we are expected to see some of those flow through more towards the end of this year which is consistent with the time line that I've just sketched out.Brooke van Velden: Does she stand by her statement that "KiwiBuild hasn't delivered the numbers we initially set out to do." and did she mean zero new homes built in June or one new home being built in April?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: When we reset KiwiBuild back in 2019 what we said was that we would build as many as homes as quickly as we could. So far we have over 1300 people that are living in KiwiBuild homes; a further 1200-odd homes that are under construction. But I do note and point to the fact that when we made the adjustments to the KiwiBuild price caps and income caps only a matter of two hours after we made that announcement New Zealand Mortgages & Securities (NZMS) the developer financer immediately made $600 million available for KiwiBuild projects. They realised that in the face of strong market headwinds actually a Government-backed lever to de-risk projects was exactly what is required to ensure we don't see a post - GFC-type collapse of the housing market.Brooke van Velden: How can the Minister guarantee that KiwiBuild will be able to deliver the 1454 homes currently in the pipeline for delivery between 2022 and 2026 when it couldn't deliver any homes for the months of January and June?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As I have outlined in previous answers to the member obviously the shutdown in Auckland last year—the COVID lockdowns in Auckland—had flow-on impacts to construction projects not just KiwiBuild projects. I think if the member wants to talk to anybody in the construction industry she'd see that there have been significant delays. The 1223 homes are already currently under construction and I think that's one of the critical things: that we do not announce KiwiBuild homes until they already have financing approved for them and they are under construction. I think for reasons obvious to every member in this House we're conservative with our forecasts on KiwiBuild.Brooke van Velden: When will the Government drop KiwiBuild and adopt ACT's policy of sharing the GST from new builds with consent-issuing local councils allowing them to develop vital infrastructure needed for more housing development?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As I've outlined to the member in an answer to a previous question we won't be dropping a Government underwrite to de-risk properties in the face of significant market headwinds. I pointed to the fact that only a couple of hours after we raised the income and price caps for KiwiBuild we saw NZMS the developer financer come out and announce $600 million worth of funding that would be made available to developers for KiwiBuild projects because of that de-risking element. I see a number of flaws in the GST proposal from the ACT Party. For many of them if you were to refund the whole GST back on say an $800000 house that would be refunding $120000 back to a council which is way more than if we look for example to the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund. Some of the projects that we have funded have been as little as $6000 per dwelling that have gone for the infrastructure upgrades required to make them. I think ACT's proposal is untargeted. There is no guarantee that we will see houses and actually I think it is paying too much per dwelling."