The Green Party's latest housing policy is "more wishful thinking", National's housing spokesperson Jacqui Dean says.
The Greens announced its new policy 'Homes For All' on Sunday, which promises to deliver warm, dry and affordable homes for all Kiwis no matter whether someone rents or owns a house.
But Dean believes although "blue-sky thinking" hasn't been a problem for the Greens, "delivery" has been.
"The Government partners talked a big game on housing before the last election and they haven't delivered. KiwiBuild was a disaster and it took three years just to get started on progressive home ownership," she says.
"The Greens want to bring in more regulation and red tape. All that will do is place more onerous requirements and costs on landlords, scaring them out of the market, reducing the country's rental stock and putting the price up on those that remain."
She says the Greens' policy will end up hurting renters and will make more New Zealanders dependent on state housing.
"The Greens can promise 5000 homes in a year, but they've been in a Government for three and they've only managed to build about 400 KiwiBuild homes.
"Promises mean nothing if you can't deliver on them, and the Greens have shown their inability to do that."
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said during the policy announcement her party hopes to create a non-profit rental sector by offering Crown financial guarantees for community housing providers, including iwi, to build new homes which can be rented out long-term. The properties would be managed as long-term rentals, giving "real security" to tenants.
The plan will build on other programmes, such as the existing Progressive Home Ownership scheme to help first-home buyers.
"Retrofitting more existing homes through the expanded Warmer Kiwi Homes programme will make them healthier for families and reduce these homes' impact on the planet," Davidson says.
"I'm really proud of the progress we've made in Government this term to address housing inequality. We've improved the lives of people who rent, introduced the Healthy Homes Standards for rentals, and with the Government's support, delivered more social housing than any Government has in decades."
National hasn't released its official housing policy for the election yet, but leader Judith Collins told RNZ in July she would repair the party's house-building "mistake".
She says National should've built more social housing while in Government and it is committed to building more.
Figures from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development show National built 2670 homes in its nine years in Government, but sold 2728.
"I'm going to commit to social housing, whether it's owned by community housing providers in places like Masterton, where I've seen it working really well, or owned by what we all remember as Housing New Zealand," she told RNZ.
"What matters is: are people being properly housed? Is the landlord doing the job they're supposed to do? And, by the way, how can we get more people into private housing as well but also into their own home?"
Collins' comments came after Dean falsely claimed on The AM Show last month National built 30,000 state houses during its nine years in Government.
"In our last term of Government we did build 30,000 emergency housing, state housing homes. We had a number of state housing homes in the pipeline, ready for when Labour came into office. Roughly half of those that they have built were already in the pipeline under National."
National later told Newshub Dean had made a mistake, and she instead was meant to say the party built "more than 3000 state and community homes" during its time in Government.
