Affordable Rental Pathway 

About the Affordable Rental Pathway 

It’s often too expensive to build or sustain new housing and offer rent at a rate that is affordable for lower income people and whānau. The Affordable Rental Pathway helps to address this by offering funding to make these projects financially viable.   

These affordable rental homes will be for lower income people and whānau who can’t afford market rent but can’t access or don't need public housing.   

Not-for-profits include organisations such as community housing providers, iwi and Māori organisations, councils, and charitable trusts.  

Round one of the Affordable Rental Pathway offered $50 million of grant funding focused in six locations. Round two offers an additional $100 million.

How to apply

There is a two-stage application process – first you need to submit a Registration of Interest.

If your Registration of Interest is successful, you'll then be invited to submit a Request for Proposal. This will include:

• how the homes meet the need of people in their community
• specific plans for the development, and
• a funding plan.

Registrations of Interest are open now

We're inviting Registrations of Interest (ROIs) from not-for-profits across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Organisations will need to complete our Registration of Interest Form according to our Guide to Registering an Interest and send it to AHF@hud.govt.nz by 31 March 2023.

Before you start completing your Registration of Interest, you can use our Eligibility checklist to determine whether your proposal meets our eligibility criteria. Your proposal must meet all of the criteria outlined in the checklist to be eligible for support.

Download our Eligibility checklist. (DOCX, 898 KB)

If you do not meet these eligibility criteria, please contact us AHF@hud.govt.nz  before submitted your Registration of Interest.

 We've designed a tool to support you to determine:

• Whether your proposal will be financially sustainable, and
• the amount of grant funding required to ensure the homes can be offered at affordable rents for a minimum of 15 years.

You can use it to inform your responses to Part B of your Registration of Interest.

Download our financial modelling tool (XLSX, 184 KB)

 Eligible organisations and developments 

To be eligible for the Affordable Rental Pathway, an organisation must be a not-for-profit organisation that can demonstrate capability to develop, maintain, and operate affordable rental homes.  

Organisations must be able to identify a specific project where they:  

• intend to create new supply of privately-owned rental homes, including by developing new homes, purchasing turnkey homes off the plans, completing commercial conversions to an as-new standard, or relocating homes 
• have identified a specific parcel of land, and have a pathway to owning, leasing, or occupying the land, including whenua Māori 
• intend to offer rents that are affordable for their target cohort, which they will need to demonstrate.  

Projects must either deliver:

• a minimum of 10 homes (dwellings) or homes with 20 or more bedrooms in Auckland, Wellington metro, greater Hamilton, greater Christchurch and Tauranga-Western Bay of Plenty

or

• five homes or with 10 or more bedrooms in other target regions. 

These homes must be offered as long-term rentals to provide tenants with security of tenure, as opposed to short-term leases.

For the Affordable Rental Pathway, dwellings include detached houses, flats, units, townhouses, apartments, and papakāinga, which may be stand alone or joined together. Dwellings also include parts of premises that are largely self-contained. For example, a room or rooms with a kitchenette and an ensuite that the tenant has exclusive rights to occupy, alongside the shared use of common areas and facilities. There must be at least one Residential Tenancies Act tenancy agreement for each dwelling.

What will grant funding from the Affordable Rental Pathway cover?  

Grant funding through the Affordable Rental Pathway can cover costs relating to the purchase and/or development of affordable rental housing, including costs relating to: 

• land  
• infrastructure
• pre-development (including professional services) 
• the house construction/vertical build  
• project support costs 
• feasibility studies where these can be directly attributed to the build of this housing.   

It excludes:  

• ongoing operating costs  
• standalone pre-development costs of other projects (including feasibility studies) or  
• any costs associated with wrap-around support services.  

The amount of funding will vary, depending on the contributions of the applicant and other financial institutions, and based on a demonstrable need. We would expect to fund up to 50 per cent of the project costs. 

Round one of the Affordable Rental Pathway

Round one of the Affordable Rental Pathway offered $50 million of grant funding in six locations with the greatest need for an increased supply of affordable rentals for those on lower incomes. These locations included:

• Auckland  
• Tauranga-Western Bay  
• Rotorua  
• Napier-Hastings  
• Wellington metro (including Wellington, Porirua, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt and Kāpiti), and  
• Nelson-Tasman.   

Proposals have been received and assessed and funding decisions in relation to this round are expected to be made in March 2023.

Contact us 

For more information you can contact us at AHF@hud.govt.nz  

Back to Affordable Housing Fund page.