Background NZR had provided housing of some sort for its workforce since the 1880s. These were often huts for the workers and small cottages for higher-ranking officials such as station masters. Privately operated railways
New Zealand Midland Railway Company and the
Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company had provided houses for staff as well, which were later absorbed into the Government Railways housing stock when those railways were nationalised. This provision of houses proved insufficient following
World War I, where a growing population and a subsequent growing demand for housing led to large increases in rents nation-wide. Railway workers, especially those who often shifted between stations and yards, found it difficult to find and to afford housing in the new location. This posed serious staff-retention problems for the Railways. The scheme was led by architect
George Troup, who in 1919 became the officer in charge of the Architectural Branch of Railways. It followed the introduction of the Workers' Dwellings Act 1905 and the Housing Act 1919, which aimed to address the squalid conditions and high rents in working-class suburbs of New Zealand.
Implementation The department gave effect to the scheme by preparing architectural designs for a standardised, pre-fabricated house, referred to as the 'B2 design', and established a house factory in Frankton near
Hamilton to build them. The wood was to be sourced from state-owned forests, and the houses were to be sited on Railways-owned land adjacent or near existing railway stations and yards. The pre-fabricated houses would be freighted to these locations by rail. Note that most of these locations were in the North Island due to constraining shipping costs. In total, over 1591 houses were constructed during the short period of the scheme's operations. The Railways became New Zealand's first employer to provide workers' accommodation at such a scale, and became the country's largest property developers and landlords. The houses could be constructed in two to three weeks by just a handful of workers. The private construction industry was threatened by this state competition and lobbied for the end of the housing scheme, arguing that private enterprise could build workers' houses more cheaply. This led to the end of the scheme, and the closure of the Frankton factory in 1929.
Post-1929 Lessons from the Railways' housing scheme influenced the state housing scheme of the
First Labour Government of New Zealand in between 1935–1949.
Disposal and sales In 1979 NZR's general manager, Trevor Hayward, published a pamphlet titled "Time for Change" indicating that the Railways were looking at ending the provision of staff housing in all but the most isolated areas of the railway network. The pamphlet noted NZR owned 4,000 houses, most of which were over 60 years old and were in a poor state of repair. In 1982, land transport was deregulated and the Railways Department was corporatised into the
New Zealand Railways Corporation, and a business group was formed within the corporation known as Rail Properties, to manage the corporation's land and housing assets. In 1983, international consultants proposed major staff cuts to make the corporation profitable, which resulted in the need for railway housing to decrease substantially. The Rail Properties group began analysing its housing stock, and concluded selling all housing would provide the corporation with $100m in income. In July 1988, details of the sell-off were announced by Rail Properties in a booklet to all tenants entitled "Sale of Railway Houses". This outraged many tenants who would have to pay market rates and lost the security of a state landlord. In 1990, the corporation sold all of the railway houses in the town of
Otira in the South Island, with a peppercorn rental paid on the land. Some were retained by the corporation and later transferred to its successors, the last being occupied in 2012 when its tenant, at
Cass on the
Midland Line retired. The house itself is still owned by KiwiRail. The Frankton Factory has been preserved and is a Heritage Listed Building. Many houses remain intact today. Over the years, many have been removed or relocated from their original locations. Some that remain have heritage status under local District Plans. == Architecture ==