Pitched as the boldest state-house building drive since the first Labour government — a plan to end the public housing waitlist by building tens of thousands of warm, affordable homes the market has failed to deliver.

The Policy: Green Party Public Housing Plan — October 2023 →

What it does:

• Commits the Green Party to build 35,000 new public homes over five years and clear the social housing waitlist, a pledge the party first put to Labour and National as a challenge in July 2023, when the register sat at 24,836 applicants.
• The original costing put the build at roughly $13 billion over five years, with around 5,000 new state houses a year, funded by lifting public-housing investment rather than relying on private supply.
• It would raise Kāinga Ora's borrowing cap from $7.1 billion to about $12 billion so the build sits on the agency's balance sheet, paired with dedicated manufacturing sites and long-term construction contracts.
• The party says the wider housing package would be backstopped by its tax platform; its June 2026 plan proposes a 2.5% wealth tax on net assets over $10 million and an inheritance tax, raising about $5.35 billion a year.
• Refreshed for 2026, co-leader Marama Davidson now frames the target as 35,000 to 45,000 homes "as a starting point", alongside 2% rent caps, a rental warrant of fitness and reversing the Coalition's interest-deductibility changes.

The result: The pledge is an opposition commitment, not a funded government programme, and it sits squarely against the current government's direction. Green co-leader Marama Davidson argues only a mass state build can end the waitlist; co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick points to the 1930s-40s state-housing era as proof of concept, but has conceded the refreshed housing plan is not yet "fully costed". Critics question both the funding and the delivery: National's Christopher Luxon called the Greens' tax package "a wrecking ball" and ACT's David Seymour branded it a "Hunger Games vision". In office, Housing Minister Chris Bishop has moved the other way — a review by Sir Bill English found Kāinga Ora financially unviable, with debt rising from $2.3b in 2017/18 to $16.5b in 2023/24 — and the government's February 2025 turnaround plan scaled the agency back to about 1,500 new builds a year, cancelling 212 projects worth nearly 3,500 homes. Whether 5,000-plus homes a year is buildable hinges on construction capacity, financing rules and a change of government.

The impacts to watch:

• The register has eased to 19,704 applicants at 31 March 2026, changing the size of the gap a five-year clearance would need to close.
• Loading the build onto Kāinga Ora's balance sheet raises the same debt and deficit questions the English review flagged, so the financing model is as contested as the home count.
• A large public build would lean on construction-sector capacity and materials at the same time as private demand, with potential effects on build costs and timelines.
• Delivery is conditional on the Greens being in government after 2026; absent that, the pledge remains a marker of opposition policy rather than an active programme.

Neutrality note: parties dispute both the cost and merits of large-scale state housing and wealth taxes; positions here are attributed to the people who hold them.