Bill takes a scalpel to state housing
State Housing Minister Bill English’s weekend announcement that the government is proposing the sale of hundreds of New Zealand state houses to an Australian company is the logical outcome of the government’s failure to get New Zealand social housing providers to buy the houses.
In a major setback for the government New Zealand’s most credible private sector housing providers – the Salvation Army and Methodist Mission – are not buying into the policy. Various iwi may be interested if they can get the houses for next to nothing so the policy is stagnating.
So enter Bill English flying a flag for an Australian selloff.
Any self-respecting minister would be embarrassed to sell state housing assets – the most critical, socially strategic asset we have – to an Australian company but the ideological adrenalin pumps so strongly through his veins that better an Australian company – Horizon Housing Company – than the New Zealand state keep them.
This will be music to the ears of National’s property developers and speculator mates as over time more tenants are forced into the private sector to drive up rents and untaxed capital values. More unearned income for the landlord elites.
Of course Bill English says the sale of state houses is to improve things for state house tenants because the government isn’t doing a good job and the private sector can do better.
English is right that the government is doing an appalling job. It is milking state tenants and asset stripping the organisation. National aims to take $250 million more in dividends from Housing New Zealand over the next three years leaving bugger all to reinvest in the houses. This follows decades of successive National and Labour governments running state housing into the ground.
The simple reality is that across the world only governments have the capacity and resources to meet any housing crisis for low-income tenants and families so National should be embarking on a comprehensive state housing building program.
I’m involved with SHAN – the State Housing Action Network – and today we wrote to Horizon warning them off from meddling in New Zealand housing. If they proceed they can expect to be the subject of on-going protest from New Zealanders.
Here’s the SHAN letter:
State Housing Action Network
28 June 2015
Jason Cubit
Chief Executive
Horizon Housing
Australia
Kia ora Jason,
Proposed purchase of New Zealand state houses
State Housing Action Network is a network of groups formed earlier this year to fight New Zealand government plans to sell off state houses to private sector organisations.
The network includes groups which have been campaigning against so-called “redevelopment” of state housing in various centres of New Zealand which has reduced state house numbers across the country and left low-income tenants and families struggling.
We are very strongly opposed to these policies because they will reduce housing stability and security for the very people who need it the most. Social housing providers such as “Horizon Housing Company” will never be able to provide quality, affordable homes for every family who needs them. Only the government has the resources and the capacity to do so. If social housing providers co-operate with these policies they will be betraying existing state house tenants and those families now and in the future who will need state housing.
Already New Zealand’s most credible social-housing providers – the Salvation Army and the Methodist Mission – have announced they will not to buy into this policy. We are asking the Horizon Housing Company to do the same.
If you decide to proceed and co-operate with this policy it’s only fair that we point out you can expect to be the subject of on-going community protest action here in New Zealand.
Please give this letter your urgent consideration. We would be happy to meet with you to explain our concerns in more detail. In the meantime we look forward to hearing from you.
I was once told by a psychiatrist employed by one of the States psychiatric hospitals that i should take the drugs he prescribed because they would ‘help me’,
When i inquired of this learned ‘professional’ an explanation of this ‘help’ he proposed in return not to ‘know’ how such drugs would ‘help’, but, he was ‘sure they would’,
Having had foreknowledge of what occurred in such ‘helping’ institutions i had the confidence to make such inquiry of this particular professional knowing the power balance between us, as patient/doctor had been equalized by a previous ruling i sought through the Courts protected me from the actions that usually ensued when the patient, myself, refused such ‘help’,
What happened ‘next’ is another story, perhaps better left for the historian to narrate, BUT, listening to the Prime Minister this morning discussing this latest attempt by his Government to divest itself of State Houses via my wireless, RadioNZ National, i was immediately transported back to the conversation with one of the States ‘shrinks’ all those years ago,
The ‘line’ from the Prime Minister and the current Government has been one of ‘selling the States housing stock to ‘social providers’ because such ‘social providers’ will be able to provide ‘more’ for the tenants of the State’,
We could spend a week, a month, a year, picking apart this ‘policy’ surrounding the supposed extra provision of ‘services’ to the States tenants which in reality would be to simply waste our time,
Such ‘policy’ is in fact smoke and mirrors, more to the point, LIES, from those peddling such a ‘policy’,
Bill ‘i despise State Housing because my parents told me to’ English has a number of imperatives within his various roles as Minister of Finance and Minister of State Housing that he is attempting to satisfy,
2 of these imperatives, he as Minister of Finance has is to produce ‘Government Accounts’ by election 2017 which show a ‘surplus’, the other being to produce such a ‘surplus’ which would justify buying the 2017 election result with tax cuts aimed at those who would likely vote National,
The other imperative of importance to the Minister of un-HousingNZ while he,wearing his other cap of Minister of Finance, builds this ‘surplus’ which will enable the proposed tax cuts is to provide a
rationale to the voting public to justify the mass sell-off of the States Housing stock,
Hence we are being fed the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of enhanced services for the tenants provided by ‘social providers’ after the ‘social providers’ have coughed up the coin to buy the States Housing,
Its all LIES of course, the Sallies, the Methodists, Iwi, and, the currently proposed Horizon Housing from Queensland Australia couldn’t without an injection of 100’s of millions of dollars of cash from the Government provide, if you will excuse the retreat into the language of the gutter, jack-shit in the way of ‘extra’ services to the tenants of State Housing,
IF, the intentions of the Government were to be to provide ‘extra’ services to the tenants of State Housing they would simply contract the likes of the Sallies et al to provide such extra services wouldn’t they???,
It is an oxymoron,(perhaps something proposed by morons deprived of oxygen), to suggest that the likes of the Sallies et al NEED to own the States Housing as an enabler of ‘extra’ help for the tenants,
But then the Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance can hardly sit in front of a TV news camera and tell the truth can they???,
The whole place would go mad i would suggest if John Key and Bill English said to the electorate ”we are selling 8000 State Houses befor the 2017 election so as to enable us to provide our supporters with tax cuts and thus a fourth term”…
[…] failed charter schools, privatisation of state housing (that policy has become such a failure, Bill English is flying in Australian buyers) and the privatisation of our prison system. These impact the voiceless and weakest members of […]
Good concise letter John. The response, if any should be interesting indeed.
A portion of the state houses could have been put up for sale cheaply and sold to Kiwi first time home buyers only.
No investors, no foreign buyers, no property developers or speculators. Just ordinary Kiwis struggling to get into their first home. At least this would give them a step on the ladder to home ownership.
I would have thought a plan such as this might have been the logical one. But no, that would address a huge problem, particularly in Auckland, so it’s a no goer for NatzKEY. Oh hang on … silly me, this bunch of corrupt mobsters don’t work for ordinary Kiwis do they?
i find your comment unbelievable Mary_A, all the current State Houses are needed no matter where they are,
The National Government has simply tightened the criteria that allows the poorest of New Zealander’s access to State Houses and then claimed that they have an excess of such houses,
What you are suggesting is more of the same, kick out the poorest of tenants and then sell their previous homes to someone with more income than they have in the guise of ‘ordinary kiwi’s’ getting ‘on the ladder’ simply leaves the poorest of us where Mary_A ???,
Out on the street or living out of a car i would suggest…
Your final comment could not be further from the truth of what I was suggesting.
Just a means of helping first home buyers. And the operative word in my previous post was “a portion” of state houses. I’d call it fair distribution of the stock.
That said, I do realize where you are coming from there BAD12.
State houses should be kept in the hands of government, not given to the private sector.
However perhaps those needing state houses, should be given the the right of buying their home if that’s what they want to do, maybe with rent going towards the purchase.
Anything is better than what is about to happen to our state housing stock, being sold off to private community housing providers!
Oh right Mary_A, sell off ‘a portion’ of the State Houses to ‘ordinary kiwi’s’ still leaves those forced to live in cars or worse living where???,
There were a peak of 75,000 State Houses at the point our population reached 2.5 million souls,
Now with a population of 4.5 million we are through neglect and previous sell-offs faced with a State Housing estate of 68,000,
Relative poverty has in the meantime risen dramatically in conjunction with the neglect to continue to increase the size of that State House estate,
The poverty and population statistics would strongly suggest that far from putting ‘ordinary kiwi’s’ on the ‘property ladder’ by stealing the collective wealth of generations of the poorest kiwi taxpayers held in the State Housing estate we should be demanding that that State Housing estate be at least Doubled to 150,000 homes,
It is in fact the ‘ownership model’ that is what has been driving Governments to neglect to increase the size of the State Housing estate, and, poor people do not ‘Need’ to ‘Own’ the State Housing estate as such ‘Ownership’ would simply lock the next generation of poor people out of gaining the shelter of such Homes….
I agree with your comments BAD12, all the way to the extent I have given you a thumbs up in your previous posts.
But I do think you are reading something into my posts, which isn’t there.
This government is hellbent on selling off an asset to private sources, to do as they want with the stock. And what they will do, I can guarantee will not be advantageous to Kiwis in the position of desperately needing state houses to live in.
My original suggestion was if they are going to be sold, why not give low income, struggling Kiwi families first option on purchasing some of the state houses.
Replacing the sold stock by building new state houses to support Kiwis requiring homes, would be a positive move in many respects – housing those in need, creating employment for the local workforce, not importing cheap foreign labour. The income earned by the trades people, would then be circulated in the community, thereby stimulating the economy.
BAD12, I think you and I are singing from the same song sheet, but with different tunes.
We need to get out there, on the streets and protest what NatzKEY is doing to ordinary and impoverished Kiwis, as far as the all out sell off of state houses to any organization which flashes the dollars, regardless of ethics.
It’s criminal and it’s obscene, devoid of humanity to the extreme.
This privatization plan etc. has been in the works far before Helen Clark.
We need to get educated about this from a broader perspective than the one we are being drip fed but a government owned media.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/11/19/what-is-agenda-21-after-watching-this-you-may-not-want-to-know/
The step of selling state housing offshore is only logical for a government that has run up $100 billion in debts from irresponsible tax cuts and doesn’t have a clue how to pay it off.
This level of gross incompetence demands the removal of the failed government.
A hundred billion is enough.
Seven years of pathetic, crushing failure without even the suggestion of a plan is enough.
The attempted suppression of freedom to comment is enough.
This worthless corrupt government must be removed.
‘I want to ride my bicycle , I want to ride my bike…
I want to ride my bicycle , I want to ride it where I like ‘….
Keys idea of infrastructure spending is to make a bicycle path.
That’s it.
Nothing more.
Thank goodness for Northlanders showing us the way to vote.
True Stuart – and where Blake comes apart is where he forgot the 2009 FJK promise to us all in the first term was to not want to ” Make us tenants in our own land” !!!!!
Which is exactly what since FJK – he has been aggressively doing so wake up Blake!
So, the Prime Minister faced with a certain amount of hostility about the latest ‘plan’ to sell-off part of the State Housing estate to an Australian owner who obviously DOES NOT and CANNOT provide any of the ‘extra’ services to the tenants of the State that the Government has been ‘pimping’ as the rationale for such a sell-off simply changes the ‘tune’,
The ‘new’ rationale that the Prime Minister would have us all believe is that the monies gained from selling off 100’s of the States Homes to Horizon Housing of Australia will be used to INCREASE the number of ‘social houses’ by building more of them,
Why do i not believe this the latest ‘waltz on a pinhead’ by the Prime Minister???,
Could my disbelief stem from the fact that i believe that faced with growing hostility over what is a stupidity the Prime Minister,(or his minders), have come up with yet another ‘line’ in a belated attempt to provide some logical rationale for what is in fact a stupidity,
Had the Prime Minister put forward such an idea at the start of the ‘sell-off’ conversation, IE:” the Government will sell X houses here to a private provider of social housing which will still be rented to the tenants at the current 25% of income and then the Government will build an EXTRA X number of State Houses on X piece of land thus increasing the total number of Homes with controlled rents” then we might have found the Prime Minister believable,
That of course IS NOT what the Prime Minister and his other Housing Ministers have until yesterday been proposing is it???,
i realize that the likes of the media interviewers on the likes of RadioNZ National are all craven cowards scared that to actually question the Prime Minister on why he keeps changing ‘the tune’ might cost them their job, BUT, given the new ‘tune’ from the Prime Minister the logical question to have asked of him would have been one which asked him to identify exactly how many EXTRA State Houses were to be built, AND, exactly where such State Houses were going to be built,
Of course we all know the answer the Prime Minister would have given had that question been asked don’t we, the rest of my comment contains the exact sum total of that answer…
CLEANGREEN – Whooah what side of the fence are you on and what on earth are you trying to say ? ? ?
Where do you come up with FJK ? ? ? ?
You lose folks with your abbreviations and your ” out of the park ” assumptions. You are wrong about me, thats for sure.
It has been clear for a very long time that Donkey Jonkey is about promoting his mega-corporate international buddies and not about genuinely and properly helping the people ( housing, homelessness etc. ) . This is the Agenda 21 plan that has been in the works for a very VERY LONG time. This housing debockle is a good example of the “ole boys network” at work.
Just ask Steven Joyce !
Consider looking at some of the links I have put up and reading up on this secret agenda and the Tavistock Institute and what is behind both John Key and Helen Clark. The UN is not our friend and Helen is in charge there. TPPA is also NOT ! ! our friend and needs to be stopped. Property developers and speculators are out for their profits and John Key supports them and to hell with
those who can not even afford rent, let alone a down payment. Busy busy scratching each others backs while nothing much changes.
Our housing problem in Auckland and elsewhere will only get worse with one horrible mistake decision being made after another.
What planet is Bill English from ? This government has already been bought up and is dictated to by these greedy corporations (agri-biz; big pharma ; land and building developers and BIG OIL – fracking madness etc. . . . )
They hold the strings and they dictate the terms. Key is just a puppet as was Helen and Obama. Until we can take back our govt. from these greedy psychopaths, we and our media and our laws and our environment are being controlled and dictated to by them and our “out of touch” govt. I am not the enemy here – I am a messenger and anyone can chose to hear and learn or not.
Consider checking out Ken O’Keefe and Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader and Rosa Koire etc. and all of those who have their heads on straight in this fight to bring more peace and sanity to this out of control global situation we are now in.
I think you may’ve misundferstood Cleangreen, Blake.
FJK = John Key. The “F” refers to a derogatory term for sexual intercourse. The rest, I leave up to your imagination (keep a bucket handy).
Thanks Frank for clearing that up. I really like what CLEANGREEN writes usually but this threw me a bit off center. Sounds like we are all on the same page anyway about how f ______ donkey jonkey is.
I guess that some abbreviations go over my simple minded head and I want others to hear us rather than be confused. I am easily confused !
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