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Building for Communities — Not for Profit: Third Sector Housing Policy Intervention Strategies in Practice

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Date

2026

Authors

Mayson, Níall

Supervisor

Tookey, John

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Master of Philosophy

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

Dysfunction within the New Zealand housing sector relating to market stability and affordability is starkly evident and echoes systemic problems in many other countries. House prices, annual price growth, housing overburden costs and building costs are simply unsustainable. House price data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) for the period 2000-2023 shows real house prices in New Zealand increased at more than 3x the rate of all OECD countries and more than 5.5x the rate of Euro area countries within the OECD. Housing affordability, measured by price-income ratio, worsened ~98% over the period, compared to ~22% for all OECD countries and ~21% for all Euro area countries. Further, the housing cost overburden rate (i.e. share of population spending more than 40% of household income on housing costs) for households here in the bottom quintile of income distribution was the 2nd highest in the OECD for owners with a mortgage and 3rd highest for private renters. Ideology based ‘quick-fix’ policy favouring greenfield and suburban infill development to build lower density and mainly market-priced housing has failed to produce improved, socially-diffuse, housing affordability. What it has ushered in is market instability, a boom in ‘for-profit’ residential investment property, rapid price and rent growth and expensive housing — especially for lower income households. Our housing eco-system feels a bit like a never ending game of Jenga — where both the property-owning majority and renting minority have a big financial interest in keeping the pieces stable but where our politicians are the only ones allowed to play. Uncertainty and instability pervades. What seems very clear is that we’re never going to subdivide our way to better housing outcomes — only social inequality. This research framework explores policy approaches adopted in selected European countries with mature third sector housing systems and actors achieving improved and more socially-diffuse housing outcomes and what can be learned and applied here in New Zealand. The research reveals that in the selected countries third sector housing policy interventions facilitated via dedicated state and municipal institutions and tools have made a positive contribution to improved and socially-diffuse housing outcomes and market stability — where not-for-profit public and private housing forms a major part of total housing stock. Key third sector building blocks include; pan-political consensus, spatial planning and housing law and policy focused on improved housing outcomes not growth, state and municipal actors proactively involved, and, in particular, low-cost funding and guarantee tools for not-for-profit housing actors and low-cost land opportunities. Not-for-profit housing systems and actors follow social (rather than commercial) imperatives and require tenure (ownership or rental) to be based on cost (not market price), with surpluses reinvested into new affordable housing development through revolving fund mechanisms. They often prioritise low to middle income segments of the market, referred to as “the missing middle”, overlooked by the state and for-profit developers. Policies focused on facilitating a “multi-stakeholder" not-for-profit housing sector — the “third sector” that is neither public nor for-profit housing — have been shown to lower housing costs, widen access to capital, improve housing affordability (including in the nonregulated for-profit sector) and improve housing quality.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/21415

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