Housing Minister Chris Bishop has promised to review a case which saw a solo working mum lose her $10,000 first home grant for a house she's contracted to settle on next month.
Her first home grant had been approved but lapsed as the settlement date was pushed out. And the Government's no-notice decision to scrap the grants has left her stressed as to how she'll make up the $10,000 shortfall.
Sharnae has been working and saving hard to be able to buy a home and she was so close.
"I had already signed my contract in March and was... just waiting for it to be ready," she said.
The contract is with the New Zealand Housing Foundation, a charity that partners with people through a shared ownership scheme to get them into their first homes.
Sharnae's settlement date had been pushed back to June. She had her finances ready but last night she got a call from the foundation about the First Home Buyer Grant being discontinued - $10,000 of her deposit gone.
"It's an awful way to find out. I was so shocked and I called my mum and I was crying on the phone to say, 'How am I going to make this work?'"
Sharnae is a solo mum of two children and getting to this point has been a slog.
"At one stage I was working two jobs to get rid of debt. I've always been a worker, I've been studying as a solo parent and it's been a three-to-four-year plan to get to this point, and it's awful to have this now potentially ripped away," she said.
She simply didn't see it coming - and no one did - Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Newshub on the election campaign he wouldn't do it.
But now he said the Government had to make some "tough choices".
Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said it was a broken promise that can be "added to the list".
However, Luxon said people can trust him.
"They can trust us to... get the job done," he said.
Bishop said the Government will honour grants that have been approved. The approvals last six months.
Sharnae had been approved for the grant but, because of the changed settlement date, her approval expired in March. She said she never received notification from Kāinga Ora that it had expired so hadn't reapplied.
"It's a huge shock and it's so stressful to now have to... think about how to come up with that difference in my deposit."
Newshub took Sharnae's case to the minister - who agreed to review it.
"I am happy to look into the individual circumstances of that case," Bishop said.
But the Government is unapologetic about its tough choices on housing, including paying Sir Bill English to review Kāinga Ora using $500,000 from the fund that pays for transitional housing - urgent accommodation for those who don't have anywhere else to go.
"I think it was done exceptionally well, exceptionally quickly by three experts at a very reasonable cost," Luxon said of the review.
But McAnulty said about 80 transitional houses "were sacrificed to pay for the review. It's... poor".
The Government said the $500,000 came from a forecast underspend of transitional housing for the current financial year.
