Vast housing alliance surges to over 160 organisations calling on political parties to make key election promise

An unprecedented alliance of organisations calling on all political parties to prioritise a “pollution busting home reno programme” for hundreds of thousands of homes has surged to over 160 signatories. 

The vast alliance includes business, health, sustainability, environmental, consumer, building and housing organisations. 

The Asthma and Respiratory Foundation, 350 Aotearoa, Auckland Property Investors Foundation, Beautification Trust, Beca, Bunnings, Coal Action Network, Child Poverty Action Group, Consumer NZ, Eco Choice Aotearoa, Greenpeace Aotearoa, JLL, Lawyers for Climate Action, Naylor Love, Octopus Energy, OraTaiao: NZ Climate and Health Council, Parents for Climate Aotearoa, Pure Advantage, Vector, WSP, and well over 100 other groups are calling for all political parties to promise a “fully funded ambitious plan” to improve at least 200,000 homes. 

The full statement from the alliance says: 

“We’re calling on every political party to promise now that, if part of the next government, they will have within six months of being elected a fully funded ambitious plan to roll out a pollution busting home reno programme for at least 200,000 homes within nine years, which will slash carbon emissions and household bills, and improve the health of thousands of New Zealanders, young and old, and create tens of thousands of jobs.” 

Named The Homes We Deserve, the alliance launched earlier this year with around 20 organisations. 

“The call to all political parties to promise an ambitious plan to improve hundreds of thousands of unhealthy homes is now deafening. Never before in Aotearoa has such a massively wide-ranging group joined forces in a unified voice calling for better homes,” the Green Building Council’s chief executive Andrew Eagles says. 

“A pollution busting home reno programme for hundreds of thousands of homes would have huge benefits for New Zealanders. It would cut household bills, slash carbon emissions, improve health, create thousands of jobs, and could bring in economic benefits topping $100 billion. And it’s popular with voters.” 

Promises to improve the woeful state of New Zealand’s unhealthy homes could be enough to swing the vote of over a million voters, according to a recent poll. 

Asked in a recent ConsumerLink survey ‘Would you be more likely, the same or less likely to vote for a political party that promised to significantly and urgently improve the state of unhealthy homes in New Zealand when in government’, one in three said they would be more likely to cast their vote for a party making such a promise. 

A large retrofit programme targeting hundreds of thousands of homes could bring in billions in benefits for the New Zealand economy, a report released earlier this year has found. 

Ambitiously renovating New Zealand homes would make a fully renewable, fossil fuel free electricity system easier and cheaper to achieve by dramatically reducing electricity demand for heating – while also helping to alleviate the so-called ‘dry year problem’, research has unveiled.