A Government-commissioned stocktake of housing shows massive failings across the sector that particularly affect children, Pasifika, and renters.

The report indicates New Zealand is "quickly becoming a society divided by the ownership of housing and its related wealth" where "recent housing and tax policy settings appear to have exacerbated this division".

In one of the findings the report indicates that up to nine in 10 homeless people who turn up at community housing providers are turned away.

BRADEN FASTIER/STUFF Housing Minister Phil Twyford commissioned the report.

This "floating population" of homelessness is hidden from official data around state house waiting lists as many of them have been excluded from state housing.

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Much of the homelessness crisis can be blamed on a long-term decline in state housing.

Chris McKeen Report author Shamubeel Eaqub: "It's a cluster."

Between 1991 and 2013 the proportion of renters renting privately rather than in state housing rose from 60 per cent to 83 per cent. This was particularly acute for Māori and Pasifika people.

The authors blame this move on a decrease in state housing stock and policies aimed to move people out of state housing.

"Terminating a state tenancy can have serious consequences and these former tenants are at risk of becoming homeless because they are likely to find it difficult to rent in the private sector," the authors said.

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The Salvation Army's Alan Johnson, one of the authors, put some of the blame on the previous Government.

He said their social housing agenda which saw many state homes sold to community housing providers was in part necessary but was "poorly funded and poorly executed."

House price and rent inflation was also at fault.

"Between 2012 and 2017 population estimated growth outstripped estimated housing stock growth by 2.1%. This difference is the root cause of the present housing shortage – essentially, we have not built enough houses for our growing, but aging population," the authors note.

RENTING A MAJOR PROBLEM AREA

Between 2012 and 2017 rents for a three bedroom house rose 25 per cent while wages rose just 14 per cent.

Report author Phillipa Howden-Chapman emphasised a widening gap between homeowners and renters, one that particularly hurt Pasifika people.

"If you own a house, as half of New Zealand adults do, then you've done very well over the last decade. If you don't you haven't," Howden-Chapman said.

Just 19 per cent of Pasifika people owned their own home in 2013, a decline of 35 per cent since 1986.

RNZ One of the co-authors of the government's housing stocktake report that will be published this morning says the rental market is dismal and that levels of homelessness in the country will not improve anytime soon.

The proportion of older people living in a mortgage-free house has fallen from 86 per cent to 72 per cent - but Maori and Pasifika children were the worst affected.

Part of this was because rentals were of much lower quality.

Diseases labelled "housing sensitive" by the Ministry of Health result in 6000 children being hospitalised ever year. These children are ten times more likely to die than other children within the next decade.

Howden-Chapman said the Healthy Homes Guarantee bill - passed last year - was a "good start" to fixing this problem but the regulations would need to have "some teeth in it."

"We are very slow to enforce whatever regulation we do have there," Howden-Chapman.

Currently roughly half of all adults live in a rental, with around 581,000 households in the private market.

The funding of the Tenancy Tribunal - which is entrusted with ruling on those regulations - was also examined in the report.

Currently tenants' bonds fund the tribunal, but 90 per cent of the cases within the tribunal are brought by landlords.

Howden-Chapman pointed to the United States where landlords renting to tenants with a subsidy similar to the accommodation supplement had to prove their homes were healthy.

The complicated Accomodation Supplement is estimated to subsidise around 40 per cent of the private market at some level.

Author Shamubeel Eaqub said the most important step would be rewriting tenancy law, which Housing Minister Phil Twyford is planning to do later this year.

"We need to move to a much more institutional model where it's the business to look after tenants and provide housing, not simply to go after the capital gains," Eaqub said.

"We've had enough gains on capital for landlords to be perfectly happy with the value of their houses."

Eaqub said the new Government was actually lacking ambition in the area - they needed to double the number of state houses and build 500,000 homes over the next ten years instead of 100,000.

He said the Government's budget responsibility rules were an unnecessary straitjacket which could hold the Government back from properly addressing the crisis.

Private renters generally spend more of their disposable income on housing that owner-occupiers or state house tenants. Private renters made up almost two thirds of the households who spent more than 40 per cent of their income on housing costs, but just 36 per cent of the overall population.

While making home ownership more affordable via schemes like KiwiBuild would help private rentals would continue to be a major part of the market.

Johnson said that while he didn't foresee any drop in house prices, "a small correction would be beneficial for a number of people."

The report was commissioned by Housing Minister Twyford when he came to office late last year.

The authors had access to data - some of it newly collated - that was not available to the public before.

"It paints a sobering picture of the devastating impacts of the housing crisis, particularly on children," Twyford said.

"Homelessness, transience and substandard housing have had a lasting, and sometimes even deadly, effect on our youngest."

"The Government is committed to addressing this inequality. Fixing the housing crisis will take bold action. The Government has a significant work programme to respond to these failures; implementing KiwiBuild, improving conditions for renters, increasing the supply of public housing, and rebalancing tax settings to discourage speculation."

Twyford said his Government was working on getting Kiwibuild going with "ten to fifteen" projects on the scale of Hobsonville Point running simultaneously.

Much of this was on under-utilised crown land.

He said it was "rather sad" that the National Party continued to deny there is a housing crisis.

"They withheld information about the true scale of the housing shortage in the months leading up to the general election," Twyford said.

National's housing spokesman Michael Woodhouse said the report was "a sound summary of the state of the market."

"There is no doubt that I think around 2014 2015 the sharp spike in demand for housing and state housing demand did catch the Government a bit by surprise. But as soon as it was aware of it, it took steps to act on a number of fronts, including on transitional and emergency housing."

He defended the Government's record on state housing, arguing that Housing New Zealand had showed themselves to be terrible landlords during the Fifth Labour Government, and thus needed the competition from community providers also providing social housing.

"The social housing challenge is a work in progress it's certainly by no means mission accomplished," Woodhouse said.

He wouldn't comment on how a possible future National government would deal with Kiwibuild, saying they would need to assess the success or failure of the policy first.

"National is the party of property ownership and home ownership and our policies will be tailored to getting more people into the ownership."

He hoped the new Government would get out of "grievance mode" and start enacting policy.

Thus far he argued the Labour government was making the problem worse by increasing costs on landlords.

"All are going to do is make the 80 percent of landlords who own one or two properties want to get out of the market."

He thought the Residential Tenancies Act could use "some tweaking" but not the kind of reform advocated by Twyford.