Kāinga Ora Chief Executive Matt Crockett Photo: RNZ/ Marika Khabazi
More than 600 roles are proposed to go at Kāinga Ora as part of proposed changes to the organisation, including a number of vacant roles.
Formal consultation started on Thursday that could see the removal of a net total of 673 roles, predominantly in corporate, back-office and other support functions. Of the roles, 195 are currently vacant.
"When Kāinga Ora was established in 2019, its mandate saw it rapidly expand to deliver thousands of new social houses and urban development projects and other functions," said Kāinga Ora chief executive Matt Crockett.
"That period of growth, however, was not financially sustainable. Kāinga Ora has since announced its reset and now needs to resize its workforce and renew the organisation to align to this new direction.
"Our organisation model and workforce need to reflect our new, narrower focus on managing and providing social housing in a financially sustainable way. We need to align to this tighter focus, and reduced volume of activity, while enabling more cost-effective provision of housing and support services to our tenants. Unfortunately, that means there may be job losses."
Frontline tenancy management roles were not directly impacted by the proposed changes.
But Crockett said there was some proposed impact to customer facing roles, including housing placement and call centre teams.
He said the changes would not negatively impact on the support and services provided to tenants.
"We have carefully looked at how many people we have in these roles now, and how many people we'll need while continuing to maintain our service levels," he said.
"I would like to reiterate the support we provide to the people and whānau in our homes will not be impacted."
This round of redundancies comes on top of 540 job cuts, which were confirmed in November.
"While our people have been aware that workforce changes were coming, it has been a difficult day. Our priority now is ensuring we do everything we can over the coming weeks to support them through this process," Crockett said.
Kāinga Ora staff had until 22 April to give their feedback on the change proposals. The Public Service Association was also being consulted.
Kāinga Ora said it aimed to have its resizing process completed by 30 June 2025.
As of 31 March, 2025 Kāinga Ora employs 2819 staff.
PSA says Kāinga Ora cuts an attack on public housing
The Public Service Association said Kāinga Ora was proposing deep cuts to the jobs of those working with other agencies to place people on waiting lists into houses, and in call centres where staff help tenants resolve issues.
"This is an attack on tenants, their families, an attack those who need homes to live in and will be resisted," said PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons.
Fitzsimons said Kāinga Ora had 78,000 dwellings to manage and these were critical customer facing roles.
The PSA understood that Kāinga Ora was also proposing to cut 12 staff, which they said was 10 percent of the team which dealt directly with calls from tenants.
The PSA understood that 66 net roles at call centres were also proposed to go.
"This will impact the service tenants expect when they have problems," said Fitzsimons.
Other roles the PSA said were proposed to go include stakeholder relationship managers who work with communities, health and safety experts, building inspectors, accountants, lawyers and business analysts.
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