5. Question No. 5—HousingHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of HousingQuestion No. 5—Housing5. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing: Does she support a housing market where private citizens can be outbid by the Government when buying their first home?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): It's never ideal when New Zealanders miss out on opportunities to get into their first home and if the member is referring to the Onehunga development that's been reported in the media recently obviously it's an incredibly hard situation for the buyers and I've sought assurances from officials that this is the only case as we deliver a thousand transitional housing places this year. Nor do I support a housing market where people are homeless where families are sleeping in cars and garages where people are dumped in motels where we have a chronic shortage of houses and where desperately needed State houses are sold off. That's the legacy we inherited from the previous Government and we are putting it right.Hon Judith Collins: Then why are more people living in motels living in cars and going homeless under her watch? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I'm very glad the member asked. What we can see if we do the calculations is the fact that we ended up—the previous Government's term of Government—with 1500 fewer public housing spots. They failed to build. If they'd built at our rate that we are over-delivering on of 1600 houses a year that would mean 15000 more public housing spaces. We would have no public housing wait-lists we would not have people in motels and we would not have homeless. That member should feel some shame about that.Hon Judith Collins: So if the Government is in the market to buy houses then why don't they buy the 323 unsold KiwiBuild houses that are languishing there? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Because they are all available for first-home buyers to buy and if the member cares to look what she can see actually is that we have had uplift in first-home sales. But I would also point out to the member that buying in homes for public housing is nothing new. If I look at the 2012-13 financial year 261 public housing spots were delivered by the then Government and 164 were buy-ins—or 62 percent. If I look at the 2018-19 financial year 1805 public housing spots were delivered by our Government and only 22 percent of them were buy-ins.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Going from the original question does she support a housing market where Kiwi private citizens can be outbid by foreigners when buying their first home? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: In answer to the member no and that's why we made the changes to ensure that New Zealanders could achieve first-home ownership.Hon Judith Collins: Is the Government competing in the first-home buyer market in a bid to increase the number of houses it is now claiming to have built? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Absolutely not. I'll refer the member to the previous question that she asked and the answer that I gave to that: that we are building far more houses and a lower proportion of them are buy-ins. The member cannot escape the fact that we are building more public houses than any Government has in generations. It is something we are rightly proud of. We are building houses to make up for a previous Government that sold them off. Hon Judith Collins: So does she agree with her chief executive Andrew Crisp who told the Social Services and Community Committee on 20 November last year So Kāinga Ora and the community housing sector are as I said being very careful not to displace people from the market—that's the intention." and if she does then why is he doing it? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes I do agree with him and what we can see actually is the record of Kāinga Ora: 22 percent in the 2018-19 year were buy-ins down from the record 60-something percent that the previous Government achieved and actually to date this year at 15 percent. But for the record I don't agree with that member's leader who described our homelessness package as a knee-jerk way without a plan that was wasteful expenditure either."