Hey Jacinda – a Mother of 4 living in a tent, wasn’t your Government gonna, kinda do something about that?

31
17

While the children of the white middle classes are being looked after with Kiwibuild, the poor continue to rot on the streets…

Mother raising four children in tents after being unable to find home
A mother and her four children have been roughing it for the summer, but not out of choice.

They’re living in tents and a car near Palmerston North and the novelty is starting to wear off.

Sharon Baker and her four children, aged from 9 to 17, spent seven years living with Baker’s uncle, Robert White, at a property in the city.

The landlord decided to sell and Baker and her family had to leave by October 28. After a brief stint camping at Tangimoana Beach, the family have been living at the Ashhurst Domain campground for 28 days in a group of tents, and White sleeps in a car.

…the reality will be dawning upon Jacinda that none of her politics of kindness means a thing when the public service is as toxic and unaccountable as it is. She can flash wonderful smiles but it doesn’t stop that WINZ worker gleefully cutting off a welfare cheque, or MSD spying on sexual assault victims or a Corrections Officer double bunking sex offenders with vulnerable prisoners. The cultures of these public services are poisoned to the core and the neoliberal Wellington bureaucratic elites know they just have to wait it out before National are back in charge again.

Only an immense shock can give Jacinda the political capital to purge and rebuild the public service.

Unfortunately the poor living in cars and tents must wait for the system to melt down before they will see a better dawn.

31 COMMENTS

  1. Yea/Nah ……. Never mind @ Martyn. WINZ will soon be able to ask MBIE to get a profile on this dirty filthy bennie
    (/sarc)

    ( https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/379727/mbie-seeks-training-on-managing-fake-online-personas )

    When you think of today’s Public Service, you have to wonder why it is that increasing numbers of these fiefdoms seem to want to set up their own little Police forces and how that fits with kinder government.

    Thompson and Clark (that was unacceptable), – then demographic profiling (that was unacceptable), and now this (yea/nah …. not really as bad eh?).
    I suppose they’ll be able to get a caring and sharing public servant to go around to the tent wearing a stab-proof vest to sort it all out and wrap around some services going forward in this space.

  2. yes I see this happening now Martyn in our Hutt valley community where national sold of many blocks of land with state flats and are building half a million dollar homes in the bronxs areas. These are the areas they allocated to Maori, PI and some of our poor pakeha whanau. Now we cant even afford to live there and the current government needs to fix this now. To make matters worse when I spoke to the builders they told me Asian people had brought all the houses so far this made me f..n angry and this is not right or fair.

  3. Why is it that ‘social services’ cannot sort out these situations immediately. Is it because they don’t vote or they are not the party’s constituency. It is a disgrace that in a country of plenty anyone is having to live like this.

  4. Apparently the most common group in poverty is pakeha parents on wages.

    “The research evidence points to the most common household in poverty is a Pakeha couple with children living in their own house (with a mortgage) and being dependent upon wages”

    https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/invisible-children

    So your race, class based rant is a bit of hyperbole because the Labour policy is not helping the white middle classes as you seem to think.

    I’m against Kiwibuild, because it mostly helps corporate welfare and is a transfer of public assets to the private sector and all to help richer first home buyers aka you have to be on double the average income to be able to afford that Kiwbuild affordable house!!!!!!! Crazy!!!

    Not a lot for renters with Kiwibuild and not only that, the focus for construction is on building unaffordable houses of circa $800k+ often nearly an hour by public transport (if there is any) outside of city centres or overprice apartments.

    The flawed housing approach, as well as increasing pollution and congestion is forcing more price rises on the poor with petrol tax rises and cheaper houses and options being demolished.

    Now the poor compete with the satellite families and wealthy new home owners in the new poorly thought out housing estates.

    Under Kiwibuild practically everyone except construction is worse off.

    A lot of the Kiwibuild offerings seem like the same prices as the private sector! Because essentially it is the private sector offering them in a PPP without the name with government.

    • In the real world Kiwibuild enables

      1. new homes continue to be built when the property market has peaked in value.
      2. ensures the property market has peaked in value.

      There is no other way to guarantee a sustained (affordable to government) boost in supply of homes (the government cannot afford the same number of newly built state homes).

    • NZ Inc is a sophisticated PONZI SCHEME, I am sure you know it. Having a steady flow of new immigrants and also overseas investors keeps the Ponzi Scheme fed and alive, so that is why this double standard government does what it does, and does not what it said it would do.

  5. Anybody who thought Cindy was going to fix this was delusional or plain stupid.
    It was always as plain as the nose on your face that Labour had spent the last 9 years collecting their pay cheques and doing nothing to prepare themselves for government.
    It is also painfully clear that Cindy is not the brightest bulb and despite her grandiose claims, she DOES lie and is far more interested in HER welfare than those of others.
    Couple this with a generally incompetent bunch of ministers and you end up where we are now.

    • “It was always as plain as the nose on your face that National had spent the last 9 years collecting their pay cheques and had done nothing but feather their own nests while in government.”

      There you go chum – fixed it for you. No need to thank me.

      • You delusional dimwit.
        Supporting a party unconditionally despite their incompetence is a sign of an utter lack of critical thinking.
        Remove your head from your sphincter before posting.

        • Oh cry me a river, (Bill English would have crushed the poor, annihilated them and don’t forget it, again!) because there’s a debate going on here.

          On the pro side you’ve got Simonm for Labour.

          On the con side you’ve got Jay against Labour.

          No law of the universe says it has to work or be pretty. You can make existential mistakes you can’t fix by the time you find them.

          Labour should have started the ideological rebuild after 2008. But what ever.

          One of you will step in dogshit. The other will self mutilate. One is an unpleasant but brief experience. The other is life changing.

          • Actually you are acting like a dimwit too.
            The point of my argument was obviously too difficult for you to understand.
            Both parties are only interested in their own interests and blindly supporting either shows a lack of ability to decouple yourself from the hive mind.
            However, when compared to the Clark government (or indeed even the key government ) this current bunch are grossly incompetent.
            Try leaving the collective for a while and you might see it.

            • Ok every one we’ve picked up a plague of Ebola virus. So I’m doing a heated debunk on adversarial politics, obviously I’m a heated Labour-tard and Simon Says slaps Jacinderella and this comment is going to burn to the fucken ground but my last comment did a decent job, went over some decent guides for instance the ideological rebuild Labour should have done awhile ago and I’d add they needed to to sort out there labour theory of value or why chunks of there voters get poorer or take of to Australia. It’s just a thing where I’m kind of correcting things here and there and obviously Frank Mackasey’s blog on this kind of thing shows that Labour or even the Greens aren’t infallible. For screw attack normies trying to claim this or that, all I want is a low level analysis, I’m not expecting a Frank level analysis or some shit just one link, or one number with which to construct a narrative, because obviously you’re talking about a sitting government and the opposition that they replaced a year and a bit ago so every one needs to do a new opinion price all the time and becoming and expert level, not Frank level that’s one above, but becoming expert level takes time so don’t rush it, take baby steps, one step at a time now go.

  6. Sorry Martin, but it is inconsistent to rail on about having to get a 51% majority, so lose the identity politics and focus on the real economic issues … and then oppose efforts to help people into home ownership while there is a homelessness problem. To win 51%, a government has to focus on both.

    As to homelessness, the approach applied after the Christchurch earthquake needs to be resorted where this problem occurs – short term emergency solutions. Temporary accommodation, the trailer home/small home park.

    • @SPC, seriously what planet are you on, if you think homeless people are on $100k income and can afford a $500k one bedroom apartment and the associated costs of rates, insurance and Body corporates or $600k 3 bedroom house and qualify for a bank loans for the money as under Kiwibuild?

      No point increasing housing supply at great costs, when you don’t stop demand and increase it, on steroids. Last year we allowed in 129 000 migrants for a population of almost 5 million. That is an astonishingly large amount of migrants and a short term and stupid approach which negatively effects everything from housing to hospitals and government immigration policy causing most of the problems!

      On top of that we have 150 000 international students and workers with temporary work visas and almost 4 million tourists visiting us each year.

      The competition for houses is not some accident, it is a state run exercise of stupidity. Especially when the migrants who paid no taxes previously (and are often of small incomes) need to use the hospitals, schools and roads and will qualify for super in many cases and most migrant workers gaining residency under the working wages either need welfare top ups for their salaries or pay a minuscule amount of tax if they make the working wage. All while putting locals on the dole and lowering wages when they can’t compete with people paying for a job and a network of migrants and offshore based multinationals sponsoring other migrants for work rather than employing locals so you are getting a Ponzi going.

      All you need to do is get on tinder, marry someone or have a kid to help the process immigration process along! No wonder the midwives are straining under the loads.

      The migrants as they are coming in under government policy are mostly costing the taxpayers money in subsidies and are of a much lower skills/educational standard than even 5 years ago. That isn’t even allowing for the rise in ‘masters’ degrees of dubious quality, which presumably increases the educational statistics but are at much lower quality of degree, some might even call them fake degrees if an equivalent standard was applied along Masters or degree programs and they had to sit the same exams.

      The state houses are not being increased in any real numbers, in fact they are being demolished and the state house land sold off, so that a few ‘lucky’ state house tenants get a middle class, brand new, state house at extreme cost, instead of renovating ALL of the state house stock within 6 months which would be a better outcome as well as KEEPING state house land.

      Kiwibuild should be building houses with the state, employing and training locals with hands on training under registered builders, and training school leavers and unemployed while they build them.

      Habitat for humanity rely on the actual homeowners to help the build so you don’t need to import in cheap labour when you already have it in NZ in spades and they could be upskilled at the same time!

      The state can then benefit from RENTING out more state houses them to increase the state house numbers which the RENTS will pay for over time while solving the housing crisis!

      While Labour, Greens and NZ First might be attempting to do something with housing, sadly they are taking their advice from the construction industry giving them free public land and social lobbyists who are clueless!!!!

      • They are not increasing the housing supply at great cost because they are on-selling the homes.

        As to increasing the number of state houses, the problem is land cost. The current practice appears to be to demolish homes and build an equivalent number (or a little more) of state houses on part of the land and finance the cost by selling off the rest of the land to private owners.

        I suspect there might be a case for just moving some of the older houses and renovating them for use in Northland (where there is a real need).

        Yeah sure they need to to get immigration levels down if they want housing success, and do this without slowing economic growth (not easy given their less than 30% of GDP spending restraint).

        • @SPC, The cost is long term because they are selling off the land. As our population increases they will either have to buy back the land at market rates to build state house on, or they will have to pay market rents.

          It became laughable in the UK when they also did a state house sell off under Thatcher and then had to pay millions of dollars to buy back the land they sold for a song.

          In NZ if we remain a social democrat country (against going towards the zero welfare state like Asia) our politicians will see their folly within their own lifetimes as they have to pay to keep the state house model with increased population and our immigration policy is geared towards a low waged economy not a high skill, high wage economy so more migrants as well as locals will need and qualify for state housing.

          What happened in the UK…

          Tory council spends £90m buying back the SAME council flats it sold off for a fraction of the price under Right to Buy

          https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/tory-council-spends-90m-buying-5634579

          “Meanwhile rents for remaining council tenants rose with a new alacrity. By 1991 they were 55% higher, relative to average earnings, than they had been 10 years earlier. “If it were not for the right to buy,” conclude Jones and Murie, “the council housing sector as a whole would have generated huge surpluses [from rental income] and the rise in real rents … would not have been necessary.” Or to put it more directly: home ownership was made possible for wealthier council tenants through discounts paid for by their poorer neighbours.”

          https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/26/right-to-buy-margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-housing-crisis

          The defence force in the UK sold off their defence houses and now they have massive private rental bills to house their own defence force!!!

          • Yes, ideally they would have doubled/tripled the number of state houses on the state house land.

            But they followed the National pathway of mixed rebuild, (to finance the new state house builds) placing in Kiwibuilds for private buyers. To do otherwise they had to either

            1. give up the 30% GDP spending restraint
            2. re-prioritise spending – keep the $3B they give in super to those still working (a billion into state housing, a billion into health and a billion into education).
            3. fund it out of public issue of finance
            4. change their debt target and borrow

            • The problem is accountancy based policy is not practical and costs more on the long run aka if they did true projections (if there is even the expertise in Wellington to do that, which I seriously doubt because the are just into ideology) when looking at population projections and welfare projections, housing and so forth, they will realise they are in big trouble.

              129,000 migrants last year, probably most of them on average to low incomes, they will qualify for welfare as soon as they have their first child. So 129,000 migrants having 1 child turns into 258,000 migrants and having 2 children turns into 387,000 migrants and that is per year… supporting 2 aged parents into NZ makes that 516,000 migrants of which the children and parents and probably the workers all qualify for welfare… need health, education, roads and public transport built…

              They need brains in Wellington not accountants and neoliberal flunkies…

              The other day a 79 year old migrant who was sponsered into NZ by here decided to marry a 60 year old after an 11 day romance and a $10,000 contribution. Probably both the 79 year old and the 60 year old will never pay any taxes but will still qualify for super and health care.
              https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/376220/10k-11-days-and-one-failed-deportation

              Then we have the Sroubek example who without having residency managed to get his Russian wife residency with a job in their import business that later he was jailed for importing in drugs. So far cost maybe more than $500,000 to NZ taxpayers in jail costs and justice costs alone… Would not surprise me if Mum, is there too, trying to get in on the residency too and rumours were in spite of the 2 million home he was somehow getting legal aid…

              Not sure why the house not seized under the proceeds of crimes act???

  7. They are ‘adequately housed’, are they not, a tent provides shelter from rain and weather, and they will have access to flowing water, and even electricity, at the campgrounds. Housing NZ told many applicants living in shit boarding houses and so, they were ‘adequately housed’, so will MSD do with similar circumstances, I suppose.

    The government may have changed, the lingo may have changed, only little else has changed, I note, also MSD and WINZ making appalling decisions and mistakes, on a daily basis.

  8. Jacinda can’t and won’t do anything about it: It was all just electioneering BS that only the very naive believed.

    So the tear jerking headline says: “Mother of 4 living in a tent”

    What it won’t ask because it spoils the narrative:

    1. Where are the father(s) and why isn’t support forthcoming? Or are they all drop-kicks too?

    2. Why did she have 4 kids without any financial security to support her? Normal people don’t pump out 4 kids whilst on welfare.

    3. She is getting the following benefits:

    Solo parent support $382.07 per week net
    Accommodation supplement $107.00 per week net
    Childcare assistance (for 3+ kids)$256.50 per week net

    TOTAL $745.57

    Where is the money going?

    3. Why should the taxpayer fund her stupidity?

      • And that’s because governments are generally answerable to their people, democratic or otherwise. Now, if you had a government that wasn’t answerable to the people, you’d get one that would be highly competent in some or most respects.

    • @Andrew, if your projections are true on the income of a beneficiary with 3 children, she is earning above 40% of the full time wage earners who are on $660 per week.

      https://www.odt.co.nz/business/economic-mindset-keeps-nz-wages-low

      No wonder having kids has become a ‘job’ for some when the NZ wages are lower than being a sole parent. It becomes a justifiable option.

      So that is why NZ government policy of dropping wages like a stone, and adding in so many low waged migrants is a disaster, as it becomes a race to the bottom!

      As Brian Eastern has said, a pakeha waged parent with 2 children and a mortgage is one of the biggest groups in poverty now.

      The taxes are going in the wrong areas, aka supporting Sroubek types and 129k migrants last year with the 150k temp work permits to boot… no wonder living costs are rising and wages are dropping, and it’s a better income to be a sole parent on $745 than 40% of full time workers on wages of $660!

      Just pay for the fake job, get permanent residency or citizenship within 5 – 10 years, you can be on the dole or DPB or on Super too!

      • Also explains why 40% of full time waged workers were not impressed with the Green Party policy in the previous elections which seemed to assume beneficiaries are the poorest and neediest group… not necessarily…

        the waged pakeha home owners with kids who seem to get the most vitriol from the woke lefties are apparently one of the largest groups in poverty… who knew, I certainly didn’t from the MSM and government discourse until I saw this https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/invisible-children

        You can imagine how, after working that 40 hour week and getting a measly salary, then being told by the Greens that the pakeha privileged home owners are the problem, etc etc did not ring true to a significant percentage of left voters who were repelled by the Green discourses around that time… especially if you lived in Auckland and saw who was actually moving into the million dollar ‘affordable’ housing estates and often were inexplicably receiving welfare from having no income.

        PS> capital gains taxes do not work when your family home is over 1 million or in a trust… but you are taxed and receive welfare the same as someone who really is on the breadline and apparently if you are new to the country, there seems a tendency from woke lefties they are automatically more deserving and ‘victims’ of the process rather than actually paying $40K plus to participate in it.

        So those who just busted their asses off on minimum wages to keep afloat and will probably soon be replaced by one of the 129,000 migrants who came last year or the 150,000 migrants on temporary work permits admitted last year and trying to convert them to permanent residency, and prepared to pay to get that job even if they work for nothing.

    • She is getting the following benefits:

      How do you know that, Andrew?

      My own contacts with welfare recipients (one of whom suffers from psychiatric problems) has revealed that MSD will not reveal the full range of entitlements that a person may recieve.

      You simply don’t know that mother’s circumstances. You can’t know. Not unless you are someone highly placed in MSD, with access to her information…?

      Or you’re just making up shit. (Eg, the Accomodation Supplement is not a blanket amount. It is region-based, with differing amounts. On top of which, you don’t get the full amount: you get a percentage of the Accomodation Supplement. The balance is paid from the main benefit.)

      So if rent is $500 per week, that won’t leave much out of $745, for food, clothing, healthcare, transport, etc, will it?

      As for your judgemental “Why did she have 4 kids without any financial security to support her? Normal people don’t pump out 4 kids whilst on welfare” – that’s easy to spout isn’t it? People’s circumstances change.

      What do you want her to do, pop them back in her womb if the father leaves?

      If anyone is exhibiting “stupidity” with your Old Testament moralising, I suggest you look in the mirror.

  9. One other point:

    It’s likely she’s in a tent because she’s on a blacklist either for previous non-payment or property damage.

Comments are closed.