An advocacy group believes the government has its priorities wrong when it comes to housing.
Ricardo Menendez March from Auckland Action Against Poverty, thinks resources have been wrongly allocated.
- More than 10,000 Kiwi households on public housing waiting list
- More than 8700 NZ families waiting for state housing
- Housing crisis to worsen despite Government's KiwiBuild policy
"We've seen a lot of talk about KiwiBuild, we've seen a lot of talk about affordable private rentals, but the state housing sector has suffered as a result."
The public housing waiting list has increased to more than 10,000 households - an increase of 73 percent or 4530 households over the same time a year earlier.
Housing and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford said while progress is being made on building more homes, demand for housing continues to increase.
"The hidden homeless that we warned about at the beginning of last year are continuing to come forward with the Housing Register increasing to 10,712 in the last quarter."
"It's going to take a concerted effort over many years to end homelessness. The housing crisis was created over a decade and isn't going to be fixed overnight. We are committed to 6,400 new places over the next four years."
Mr Menendez March said not enough is being done to solve the issue and the Government needs to focus on action.
"We are calling on the Government to look at genuinely pulling out all of the stops, not just rhetoric, actually putting in the resources required to build enough state homes."
He said that more needs to be done to improve the unaffordable private rental market too, including regulation.
"The Government have said nothing about putting a cap on rents, introducing legislation to freeze rent increases or at least limit the amount."
Newshub.
