Unaffordable homes and outsourcing community housing for the poor to a community that can’t house the poor

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So Massey University’s Home Affordability Report latest survey shows wages have risen $35 per week on average in the past year while house prices have jumped $38,000. How a $35 wage increase per week is supposed to offset a $38 000 jump in housing prices hasn’t been explained by the Government and the media still seem to be hunting for magical bottles of $100 000 wine to bother challenging Key on his do nothing but sprawl urban planning.

A market with no capital gains tax to reign in domestic speculators and no restrictions for foreign speculators to buy property has created a housing bubble that is great for baby boomers and crap news for every other NZer.

While this Government robs two entire generations of any possibility of home ownership,  they are also  busy destroying beneficiaries in state housing.

Sweeping the problem of housing for the poor into the hands of religious charities is an abdication of political responsibility, it is the Government’s obligation to house the poor, not the bloody Church!

It is a sad day when the Prime Minister of NZ can own a Parnell Palace and a Hawaiian mansion while a vast chunk of that PM’s citizens can’t afford the deposit on one house.

12 COMMENTS

  1. Labour’s “drop in the ocean” tax will have speculators laughing all the way to the bank.

    • Lets look at Nationals track record over the last 6 years and what they’ve done to improve housing affordability and availability.

      Years 1-3, nothing

      Year 4, sell off state housing land in Glen Innes to private developers and shunt tenants to the four corners of greater Auckland if they are lucky. Some less desirable state housing land will be used for intense state housing

      Regarding housing affordability/availability, nothing

      Year 5. 5 years of sitting on their hands apart from giving their mates state housing land and house prices and vis a vis rents are going skyward.

      In absence of any government action enter the Reserve Bank because even a blind man with wooden glasses could see, debt vs incomes are getting very concerning. In come the Loan Value Ratio rules that now exclude most first home buyers.

      Year 6. It finally dawns on National that there are not enough houses to play the housing roulette game. Foreign and local speculators alike are pissed off, they can’t punt on the housing market so easily any more. Nick Smith panics, donor money at stake.

      Rush in accords with National Party mayoral play thing Len Brown and propose 10 -20 thousand new homes in Auckland, a fair bit of it in what is to become ex state housing areas. A tear arse bit of policy that will only throw petrol on to the fire and worse has no idea how these people are going to come and go from these new suburbs or what the hell is going to happen to all the state house tenants that are about to lose their homes to Smiths bulldozers.

      All of which only further enhances the myth that National know what they are doing with our economy because almost NONE of the fundamentals causing these problems have been dealt with.

  2. Taxes are a secondary way to go to even the playing field up, wages absolutely must rise, if that means the CEOs and shareholders get less, well, so be it, you don’t get to make a profit till after all your bills are properly paid and the wage bill is just one of them

  3. Most “Average Joes” I know would be over the moon if they had received a $35/week pay rise this past year. I strongly suspect that highly paid persons have boosted this general average figure by receiving more than their fair share of last year’s pay rise pie.

  4. A high capital gains tax is needed immediately from the new government. National/Act/UF/”Maori” are creating the poorest class of landless citizens every to exist in NZ,—and they can’t wait to build slums for them.

    • A capital gains tax, for the purpose of discouraging speculation, may be useful where property is resold within a short period of time, but for longer term tenures a land tax would be preferable. In addition, making interest non deductible for tax purposes may also be useful since it would probably discourage highly leveraged investment while not putting off anyone who merely wishes to invest his hard earned savings in a rental property.

  5. Yes indeed. And just in case you could manage to scrape up a few thousand dollars and qualify for the Welcome Home Loan – National scrap that too!

    For some reason, they (the government and their banking fraternity mates) think you need a big deposit for a budget home – but you don’t. If you can pay ridiculous rents to your Capitalist Landlord, then you can afford the mortgage on a cheap home – and sometimes the mortgage is actually cheaper than, or the same as, the rent! This last vestige of hope – removed.

    WHY?

    Opinion.

  6. The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people. -Helen Adams Keller, lecturer and author (1880-1968)

  7. Capital gains tax = disincentive to sell = fewer houses on the market = higher property prices. That’s what you want, right?

    • @Harry
      Capital gains tax = disincentive to buy houses to speculate for profit = more houses on the market for long-term owners = less volatile property prices.

      AFAIK, CGT will not apply to the family home.

      • In the early 1970s the Labour government introduced a tax on “property speculation” which was intended to curb rising prices. It had exactly the opposite effect. This time it will be different?

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