The geography of rental housing and the restructuring of housing assistance in New Zealand

In 1993 major reforms to the delivery of housing assistance in New Zealand came into effect. These included the introduction of an Accommodation Supplement to provide income assistance for housing, the establishment of Housing New Zealand Limited to market former state houses and the setting up of the Ministry of Housing to provide policy advice. These reforms have replaced an explicitly spatial public policy based on the provision of housing stock in particular locations with an apparently aspatial housing policy based on income supplements,. The former state housing construction and allocation programme, however, has generated residential location patterns which continue to constrain and predetermine the choices made by those contemporary households who now draw income supplements. Far from spatially diffusing rental demand, these recent housing reforms show every sign of further concentrating demand and supply of low rental housing and reinforcing the inherited, highly segmented social geography of the New Zealand city.