The State as Employer and Landlord: State-Owned Company Housing in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Alongside the history of public housing in Aotearoa runs a less well-documented history of rental housing provided by the state not as a welfare measure but to its employees—including teachers, police officers, soldiers, miners, loggers, railways workers, construction workers, and civil servants. Rather than being developed side by side, public housing and employee housing often competed for scarce funding and resources and an overburdened construction workforce. Both when these two forms of state rental housing were established and when they were wound down, public and political support was sharply polarised, and their competing demands were used as wedge issues by political parties to undermine the housing priorities of their opponents. This paper considers how the state has navigated the competing political and economic demands stemming from its simultaneous roles as employer, landlord, regulator, and welfare provider.