Emergency housing fund launched to shelter vulnerable New Zealanders

The New Zealand government Monday unveiled what it claimed was the country's first state funding for emergency housing amid claims that the country's housing crisis has become a "national shame."

The government would provide 41.1 million NZ dollars (28.13 million U.S. dollars) over the next four years to pay for about 3,000 emergency housing places each year for the most vulnerable, said Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett.

"Emergency housing provides an essential safety net for people in crisis, and is an opportunity to intervene and support families with complex needs," Bennett said in a statement.

"Emergency housing providers told us accessing funding to provide these places was difficult so now, for the first time, emergency housing will have ongoing, dedicated funding."

Opposition lawmakers said the funding was the inevitable consequence of the government's failure to address the growing housing crisis and its determination to sell-off state-owned houses instead of building more.

Thousands of desperate families were living in camp grounds, garages and cars, because the government refused "to upset the mega profits of foreign speculators, land bankers and the super-rich," said housing spokesperson for the main opposition Labour Party Phil Twyford.

"It is a national shame," Twyford said in a statement.

"You just have to walk through the centre of our main cities to see the rise in homeless people begging for money or food. New Zealanders hate to see poverty and squalor on our streets."

The opposition Green Party said the emergency housing fund money did nothing to address the underlying causes of the housing crisis in Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city and home to a third of the population.

If the government really cared about affordable housing, it would remove tax incentives for investors buying up properties and build more state houses, Green Party social housing spokesperson Marama Davidson said in a statement. Endit