Salvation Army rejects buying state homes: ‘Housing NZ is making a mess’
The Salvation Army has decided against buying state homes off the Government, a blow the Labour Party says is “hugely embarrassing”.The decision came after a study to test its capacity to become a major social housing landlord.
Prime Minister John Key confirmed earlier plans to go through the transfer in January. The plan is to transfer more of the responsibility for housing low-income and vulnerable tenants by selling a portion of housing stock to community providers such as churches, iwi and non-government organisations.
But Major Campbell Roberts, of the Salvation Army, says the church organisation does not believe “the lives of tenants would be sufficiently improved by such a transfer”.
Nor did it have the “expertise, infrastructure and resources to successfully manage any social housing transfer of size”, he said.
“It’s just that to take on a significant number of houses is a very complex operation … the numbers require huge inputs of capital.” Housing NZ was in an appalling state, he said.
“The reality is with Housing NZ that through successive governments it’s really making a mess of what it’s doing. Housing NZ has massive delayed maintenance … from a government and management point of view, appallingly done and so you can’t leave it how it is.”
For the last couple of years, National have used the Salvation Army the way they use their relationship with the Maori Party, as political camouflage to ram through their hard right agenda. It’s vital for John Key’s laid back brand that he isn’t seen as the hard right politician he is so policy has to be whitewashed and the sharpest ends always aimed at the weakest and poorest who have zero voice inside the mainstream media so that pundits who aren’t touched by these sharp edges can crow how ‘moderate’ John Key is.
That political camouflage has been ripped asunder by the Salvation Army’s decision to walk away from Key’s mass privatisation of State Housing. To date Key has pretended this mass sale is for the benefit of the poor when they are the least of the concerns here. This is a massive state asset sale dressed up as ‘Social Housing’, unfortunately middle NZ despise beneficiaries for being a bummer while they are on holiday so this outlandish lie is not challenged at all.
At least the Salvation Army have managed to show they are not the chumps National thought they were.
finally the sallies have stood up straight and said stop rogering me
No they haven’t – they’ve just said they can’t do it themselves but are happy to join a conglomerate! We spent the weekend watching the English experience – New Era Estate, Sweets Way, – these are the future if we let these charlies get their way and Mj Roberts is just an apologist for this money hungry oligory which is opening the doors for their mates to make some more money from our past taxes & people’s misery. I suggest he reads 1 Timonthy 6:10 then reconsider Bill English’s position & if he wants to be involved with it.
something to think about https://youtu.be/o2lpusKXpb4
Excellent news. Now, if all of the other potential parties also walk away, it will put the responsibility for social housing squarely back where it belongs; with this craven, self-serving, cringe-worthy government.
Well done Sallies. At least we have one agency that’s openly stated they’re not prepared to collaborate with Key’s autocratic chicanery. Major Roberts seems all too aware that National are patting the middle class on the head and saying “There, there, everything’s going to be fine.”, while at the same time knifing the poor and disenfranchised in the kidneys.
Sleepy eyes are slowly opening, jaws are dropping and the masses are steadily coming to realize what a smirking bag of poison Key really is.
This isn’t an embarrassment for National, this was always the plan (a classic bait and switch):
Or as Little himself said:
These won’t be mum&dad investors, these will be multinational property bankers buying land at fire-sale prices. National MPs can look forward to lucrative consultancies in the field when they retire (and large campaign contributions in the meantime).
Yes….the classic bait and switch….and English saying they have been talking to other interested party’s…
So…the developers move in …and as someone has said….get the land at fire sale prices…and /or knowledge of a bubble bursting….which would make the purchase even lower – and more attractive.
You can almost hear the sound of the bulldozers moving in to make way for high rent / return apartment tenancies , cant you….
Finally we are not ashamed of our Kids anymore as they were “Dedicated” in the Salvation Army Church.
Hallelujah there is a heaven after all, good for you sallies not wanting to lie down with the devil Keyster.
Key attends his wife’s church as an “agnostic” the two faced prick he has become since childhood.
One would expect, that as a professed Christian, compassion would temper Bill English’s enthusiasm for the introduction of Dickensian Workhouses – mmmm surely not a case of form over substance and/or perhaps the dominant ideology at play is the neoliberal one that abhors government involvement in community / social services.
Mind Bookkeeper Bill was very generous in giving away public money to investors, who had willingly taken on high levels of risk for HIGH RATES of return, when the finance companies collapsed – Nationals major initiative in response to the GFC.
It does leave one wondering what criteria Mr English uses to qualify a section of the community as deserving or undeserving of public support?
Thinkaboutit,
Billshit English reminds me distinctly of miserable Ebenezer Scrooge out of the hallowed Xmas tale that redeems himself in time but this ones a dud and needs exterminating like a roach, sorry roach.
http://www.wisegeek.org/who-is-ebenezer-scrooge.htm
Ebenezer Scrooge is the miserly main character of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol first published in 1843. He is probably one of the most well known misers in literary history, and has become, over time, a symbol for transformation of the spirit.
I watched the interview on Breakfast this morning. The Sallie guy uhmmed and ahhed for most of it, but the truth finally came out at the end. They simply couldn’t make the financial side of the deal work. He said the Salvation Army would have to undertake massive amounts of debt, resulting in a negative cash flow for at least ten years. It’s hard to disagree with the maths – you’d have to be crazy to buy hundreds of houses (a lot of them seriously run down) in the middle the biggest housing bubble NZ has ever witnessed.
I can’t imaging the good stock being sold off. It’ll probably be the ones that are run down and not viable for repairs or in questionable locations? You don’t usually sell off the parts of your portfolio that work for you, but then nothing surprises me anymore with this govt.
How will the NATZ, ACT, MAORI PARTY, BUDGIE PARTY polish the turd of selling of state assets – state housing?
Mum and dad investors that missed out on buying state power companies now have a chance to have a stake in a housing portfolio?
Property developers will re-energise the state housing market and rejuvenate the tired, uneconomic state asset that has degenerated through years of mismanagement by the opposition?
The national government and its coalition partners will reluctantly synergise with property experts to maximise the social benefits of its jewel-in;the-crown
property portfoliosocial-safety-net, to deliver a world-classprofitinvestment in the future?State tenants, looking for indoor-outdoor flow will be 50% better off, because we will remove the indoor aspect of state tenancies and replace them with 100% outdoor – coming to a city near you!
No matter how much you polish the turd Johnny and Billy-Boy, a turd is a turd, is a turd. Keep state housing, in state hands and keep your grubby, money hungry, turd-burgling paws off what has been bought and paid for by decades of successive taxpayers.
Comments are closed.