Pitched as a way to "end homelessness, fix renters' rights, and end the housing crisis", the Green Party's "A home for everybody" plan promises a state-led building programme alongside the biggest crackdown on landlords in a generation.

The Policy: Green Party Housing Crisis Plan — March 2026 →

What it does:

• Commits to building "tens of thousands" of new public homes, with co-leader Marama Davidson saying scaling public housing by 35,000–45,000 homes over five years is the "starting point" needed to clear the social housing waiting list — a figure this tracker records at its 40,000 midpoint.
• Caps annual rent increases at no more than 2% a year through a Renters' Rights Bill, alongside scrapping no-cause evictions and an independently certified Rental Warrant of Fitness.
• Creates a national register of all landlords, property managers and boarding houses to require accreditation and compliance.
• Reverses the coalition's $2.9 billion restoration of interest deductibility for residential property investors, redirecting the money toward first-home buyers and public homes.
• Targets a backdrop of 19,704 applicants on the social housing register as at 31 March 2026, with rents and the wider cost of living rising — Stats NZ put annual CPI inflation at 3.1% in the March 2026 quarter.

The result: This is an Opposition election policy, not law — co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick acknowledged it is not yet "one of the fully costed policies", and the party's comparable 2023 build plan was costed at nearly $14 billion over five years. Feasibility is the central question: the current Government, through Kāinga Ora and community housing providers, has delivered about 6,800 net new social homes since November 2023 and funds roughly 1,500 new builds a year, so 40,000 in five years (around 8,000 a year) would be a steep step-up in construction capacity and cost. The rent cap is the most contested element. Infometrics principal economist Brad Olsen warned controls can disincentivise landlords and reduce maintenance, saying some would do the "bare minimum"; National's Chris Bishop called the approach "economically illiterate rubbish" and predicted fewer landlords and pricier rentals; ACT's Brooke van Velden accused the Greens of "othering" landlords. Property Investors Federation vice-president Peter Lewis said landlords would sell up and the rental shortage would grow. Davidson rejected the supply criticism as "rubbish", arguing the policy pairs rent controls with a large public build. (Neutrality note: tax and landlord-regulation settings are contested; positions here are attributed to the people who hold them.)

The impacts to watch:

• Whether a 2% cap slows rent rises for sitting tenants or, as critics argue, deters investment and shrinks the private rental pool over time.
• Whether the state can recruit the trades, materials and financing to roughly double the social-home build rate without blowing out cost.
• How reversing interest deductibility and adding a landlord register changes the number of rental properties on the market.
• The fiscal trade-offs of a multi-billion-dollar programme in an election-year contest over tax and spending.