Housing Minister Megan Woods:
“The very first time in a very long while that we have had a public housing build target that does match the current waiting list”
Excuse us Ms Woods but the facts on planet earth are the following:
- The current state house waiting list is 16,309.
- It has increased by over 3,000 per year for each of the past three years of the Labour-led coalition government.
- The budget announcement of 8,000 new “public houses” over five years (6,000 public houses and 2,000 transitional houses) means at best 1600 new “public houses” each year for the next five years.
- The government target is 1400 houses less, year by year, than the growth in demand.
- The state house waiting list is increasing at double the rate of the government’s “public house” building plans.
- There is no possible way to construe the minister’s statement as even beginning to approach the truth. The government announcement is indifferent to the desperate housing needs of low-income tenants and families.
Other important but unreported facts.
- The 8,000 public houses are NOT state houses but rely on at least 25% being provided by social housing providers.
- The government is not putting a single dollar into building new state houses – it is requiring Kainga Ora to borrow to build them despite the government being able to borrow at cheaper interest rates.
What a sick joke. Want to create jobs? Want to address housing shortages? Want to improve the environment? Build state houses. This requires you to:
– borrow the fucking money via Treasury
– pay Kiwis’s (not transient immigrant workforces that will leave)
– build to the 5 GreenStar rating system i.e. environmentally friendly, warm, dry, resource efficient etc
This is so obvious it’s just not funny but these clowns don’t seem to get it. Too many lawyers, accountants, and impractical time wasters in Government (and I’m talking about all parties). I mean, check this out: the new Digital Council of Aotearoa contains, you guessed it, a ‘futurist’ with no achievements to his name, and lawyers and accountants who have never built a tech solution in their life.
Seriously, our Government needs to get some brains and balls and do something practical for a change.
Gotta keep that neoliberal dream bubbling away in its cauldron of spite…
There needs to be a lot more state houses because we are importing in poverty and allowing Meth and harmful industries like tobacco and liquor and debt agencies and truck shops to propagate in NZ.
Meanwhile our society is being impoverished for a balanced life and society.
The arts are like a dirty word now and missing in action in NZ for about 30 years. A 1 year business diploma or ‘masters’ for a Burger King or uber/courier gig job has replaced the traditional BA as being of great economic importance to government and tertiary in NZ.
Diversity in NZ has become a joke and used exclusively by the neoliberal to expand the poor into NZ, while every other area in NZ is less diverse!
The arts helps to create a well rounded society with less mental health issues, as well as the economy.
To help housing there also needs to be something done about the growing dysfunctional people and families in NZ.
Landlord’s $15,000 bill after tenant’s neglect: ‘the worst house I’ve come across in 20 years’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/121496784/landlords-15000-bill-after-tenants-neglect-the-worst-house-ive-come-across-in-20-years
When someone destroys a house, it means it’s not available for someone else to live in as well as the costs to fix up the house and the living environment to the children being bought up like that.
The government is not looking at the holistic situation to solve housing, in any real depth. They just keep trying to bring is less and less qualified people everywhere to save money and it costs them as well as the recipients who deserve the best person not the cheapest in their lives. (aka children in care, the disabled and elderly needing home support, the sick and mentally ill).
Sadly housing has become a political issue full of soundbites and comms people and private practise making a buck, not actually any help to either the tenants, the children in these situations and the landlords. And they have the ear of government.
What moved petrol prices down the most?
This useless clown in the unnecessary H&S gear? or a simple virus with no skin in the game?
Government have no idea how to actually build homes, state or private. Its not their skill set. And unfortunately under our countless regulations in this country, everyone finds such basic requirements a mind boggling challenging task.
Make it simple for all to build new homes, all homes, modular, tiny, spec, you name it. Get rid of red tape fast.
If they could get even 1000 homes were built before election would prove a decisive point
We (the country) tried that in the 90’s & all we got was expensive leaking homes, I don’t see any point in trying the same idea again as there is a large section of society willing to make a quick dollar building what are best described as tarted up tragedies.
100% right Bonnie ,,, Lowering building standards or ‘cutting red tape’ as Ross likes to call it ,,,,was an expensive disaster resulting in modern homes leaking and rotting ,,,, ruining quite a few New Zealanders or damaging their health in the process.
In reality the NZ building industry has been a dysfunctional boom and bust sector of our economy for decades and decades now …
“New Zealand announced its own investigation into its underperforming construction sector in 2009 ” … “it contributes less to the economy than most countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This is mainly because work in New Zealand’s sector follows a boom and bust cycle 7 .
Furthermore, construction and manufacturing were the main contributors to a 1.2 percent FALL in NZ productivity from 2006 to 2009 . https://www.constructing.co.nz/files/file/301/The%20Effects%20of%20Boom%20Bust%20on%20National%20Construction%20Industry%20Performance%20(2).pdf
The Christchurch earthquake saved it from its last downturn …,,,Unfortunately previous ‘bust ‘ periods which produce low apprenticeship numbers coupled with our skilled workers heading overseas to work ,,, which was most of the 1990s ,,, meant we ‘cut red tape’ with immigrant workers and general building standards in the Christchurch rebuild ,,, low balling private insurance companys and others signing off on cheap inferior work… profited from regulation flouting low standard work.
“The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) today released its report into structural repairs which were exempted from needing a building consent. It revealed more than a third of the surveyed homes failed to meet the building code.
Thirty-two of the 90 homes surveyed did not meet the Building Code, while a further 23 had defects.” ..
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee and the Nats were the icing on the cake for the ‘marketplace’ ripping off Christchurch home owners ,,,
Right now it should be bloody obvious that a massive Government driven state house building project ,,,and affiliated apprenticeship training ,,, is needed for NZ ,,, it is much much better than productive NZers being wasted and put into poverty on the dole.
“the construction industry in New Zealand has a multiplier effect into other industries: for every $1 of spending in the construction industry, $1.168 is generated as output into the economy.” ie , building houses will help keep the forestry workers in a job ,,, and the mill worker ,,, truck driver etc etc .
Bugger the roads …. build houses ,,,
Bonnie,
That’s bs! You got leaky homes because of useless architects who thought design trumped weather tightness!
Im in the Trade nearly 30 years now. Are you?
Builders were following architectural plans signed off by university trained council bureaucracts.
When i say “remove red tape” im not implying build shit homes not appropriate for our climate. There’s a big difference
Actually the biggest cost to leaky homes was caused by structural issues when the untreated timber that was allowed to be used on the framing to save costs in the late 1980’s to early 2000’s, rotted out.
It was further caused by poor cladding materials, plaster and artificial weatherboards.
All signed off by government BRANDZ to be used. So the government should have been blamed a lot more for leaky buildings but got off, just like the cladding providers.
The owners were the ones who were destroyed, as well as the builders and rate payers paying out by bovine council COC.
Given Ross was in the trade for nearly 30 years I thought he would have known that.
‘What moved petrol prices down the most?’
Neither of the factors you mentioned!
What moved petrol prices down BEFORE Covid-19 hit demand was the oversupply from Saudi Arabia that results from pumping water into the substrata below the oil-bearing layer, and the “Oil War” that erupted When OPEC fragmented and Russia decided not to cave in to Saudi demands.
I agree that the system is riddled with ‘useless clowns’ who wear unnecessary health and safety gear…but don’t forget that some ‘leeches’ have been making money out of supplying that gear and other ‘leeches’ have been employed ensuring unnecessary procedures and equipment are used.
What is so ghastly is the fact that government officials (both central and local) devote all their energy to trivial matters (such as how many orange cones should be placed, and at what spacing, around a machine engaged in mowing) whilst TOTALLY IGNORING all the factors -especially declining energy availability and runaway planetary overheating- that will demolish the living arrangements of the vast majority of people living in NZ in the near future.
Even as the system begins to implode there are plenty of people ‘shouting at the tops of their voices’ for more of what caused the predicaments in the first place and will exacerbate them!
‘Water restrictions have been introduced in Auckland in response to one of the most severe droughts in the city’s history, but a property maintenance business says they will be costly and could put jobs at risk….
Experts say the dry conditions are expected to continue through to the end of June, with no meaningful amounts of rain predicted for the region.
NIWA’s principal forecasting scientist Chris Brandolino says rain could arrive later in May, but even if it does there would not be enough to relieve the drought conditions.’
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/auckland-water-restrictions-begin-but-will-be-costly-for-some/ar-BB149T50?ocid=spartandhp
There needs to be a lot more state houses because we are importing in poverty and allowing Meth and harmful industries like tobacco and liquor and debt agencies and truck shops to propagate in NZ.
Meanwhile our society is being impoverished for a balanced life and society.
The arts are like a dirty word now and missing in action in NZ for about 30 years. A 1 year business diploma or ‘masters’ for a Burger King or uber/courier gig job has replaced the traditional BA as being of great economic importance to government and tertiary in NZ.
Diversity in NZ has become a joke and used exclusively by the neoliberal to expand the poor into NZ, while every other area in NZ is less diverse!
The arts helps to create a well rounded society with less mental health issues, as well as the economy.
To help housing there also needs to be something done about the growing dysfunctional people and families in NZ.
Landlord’s $15,000 bill after tenant’s neglect: ‘the worst house I’ve come across in 20 years’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/121496784/landlords-15000-bill-after-tenants-neglect-the-worst-house-ive-come-across-in-20-years
When someone destroys a house, it means it’s not available for someone else to live in as well as the costs to fix up the house and the living environment to the children being bought up like that.
The government is not looking at the holistic situation to solve housing, in any real depth. They just keep trying to bring is less and less qualified people everywhere to save money and it costs them as well as the recipients who deserve the best person not the cheapest in their lives. (aka children in care, the disabled and elderly needing home support, the sick and mentally ill).
Sadly housing has become a political issue full of soundbites and comms people and private practise making a buck, not actually any help to either the tenants, the children in these situations and the landlords. And they have the ear of government.
Oh and what about the pledge/target at the last election of 100,000 new state houses
Name an infrastructure project that this government has completed.
Just one
They completed kiwibuild remember?
By removing the targets it became “complete” even if they never built another house.
Awesome!
How dare you actually measure things!
Which modern government built any infrastructure project in 2.5 years?
Name an infrastructure project completed by the previous government that wasn’t a complete clusterfuck?
Just one
South Waikato expressway
Waterview tunnel
Auckland north western bypass
Puhoi Tunnel
Huntly bypass
Mangere wastewater treatment plant extension
Christchurch hospital acute services building
Ultra fast broadband is an obvious one that has enabled many people to work from home and can only be interpreted as a rousing success.
There are numerous others but broadband is the obvious one.
The trouble with the current Labour government is despite having good intentions, they fuck up everything they touch.
Jays, the broadband is pretty patchy even around Auckland (Phil Goff apparently still commuting cos broadband is so bad) but it’s the same all around much of Auckland. Rural broadband is non existent. Contention ratios are still way to high, and the government lets Chorus and Vodafone and others rip everyone off while providing an appalling service.
The Chorus was not a success if you consider than it destroyed the worker conditions in that sector and now over 90% of Chorus workers are working illegally under minimum wages… quality is poor.
Success, by what measure?
An important post. What has Labour got against nests for birds? They will say indignantly none – we are doing our best to preserve the wild populations. So many of our human population are going back to the wild, I guess they will soon become a priority for housing. Tell you a secret LabourCoa – many people will become wild soon and then you will be forced to do more building – of prisons. What about getting your priorities right, housing is more needed than roads.
We will need less of them if we look after public transport, have less tourists, get the tourist companies to sell vans, and have special touring tickets for trains, encouraging people to travel throughout NZ, and stay either at YHA hostels, which would receive extra funding, or backpackers which would be inspected to make sure that owners don’t spy Psycho-like on their guests, or camping ground cabins.
Yup! Delusional! They’ve definitely gone past the point of no return, in believing their own bullshit!
It was in 2017;
Housing,Homelessness
Health
Education
Environment
And now C19. Anything to avoid dealing with whats in the too hard basket.
The labour party have recently been endorsed by Roger Douglas, just last week!
No need to say anymore! ffs!
Amazing.. Nine years of having the public service hollowed out,thousands made homeless, beneficiaries attacked by the very people who they should have been able to turn to for help, billions of dollars stolen out of the economy for the purpose of making life after politics that much more opulent for the members of the National Party of China, the creation of the first “eggs all in the one basket” economic model that has made John Key. and his handlers incredibly wealthy on the back of widespread hardship, and all I see here is petty whining that fails utterly to acknowledge just who it was that created this toxic sludge of an economy, and who it was that stacked the ministries with their own poodles to expedite the rape of the public money, and scapegoat the victims of JK economics…
It’s this sort of short attention span, self involved drivel that will deliver us back into the claws of those who have proven to be the worst possible choice for this, or any other country, and society that has ambitions to become a mature, balanced, and healthy one.. Amazing.. Just fucking amazing just how much people with ignore just so they can go back to pretending to be rich in a house that is at least 50% overvalued, and which is the perfect symbol of utter folly, leading to widespread poverty. and eventual insurrection… Clever boys and girls.. Keep it up.. Just be careful, for you may well get what you wish for..
Maybe if National AND Labour werent busy selling off all our forests we would have cheaper timber to build more…
Not just state housing that needs more thought, also people who are living in their own homes but need home help.
The government and ACC might also like to investigate how many of the so called ‘home help’ services actually turn up and do their job and they hours they are supposed to work… because increasingly this is not being done to any sort of standard, due to lengthy profit driven private operators, the subcontractor model, the actual worker doing the job being the cheapest, unqualified and often with poor communication, when part of the role is to see how the person is doing!
In spite of this, the workers are left to their own devices and operate without any scrutiny. If anybody tries to complain, there is a lengthy wait on the phone to the home care agency.
Luckily (sarcasm) most of their clients are too sick to complain when nobody turns up or the service is terrible. NZ home help has become about sending the cheapest person they can find, to look after the vulnerable and it’s a very mixed bag.
Elderly man lay dead for days at council flat – and he was the second one that week
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12255307
and this…
Hostel chased family for unpaid bills as student lay dead, dad claims
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12275070
We are also at the point where rest homes lose the elderly from their rest homes who are found dead or presumed dead, but the DHB’s don’t care. Even when an elderly person’s body was never found in a Orewa rest home and another elderly man (ex famous sports person) was on 20/20 and was found dead after only being there a short while (the rest home changed their name after the first death when they didn’t even recover a body). No warning bells, ringing for government with repeat dead bodies found off site from the same rest home.
Especially with this going on. There are so many dysfunctional people now. (The state of NZ journalism).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/110174662/the-fall-from-grace-of-grant-hannis–the-academic-who-sexually-assaulted-a-rest-home-resident
No wonder children in care are more likely to be abused in care as out of care. A private/ “charity” profit driven model does not work to look after people in NZ.
The entire model of private practise for government services needs to be removed.
Whatever the new government achieve in regards to building the state housing stock, it is considerably better than what NATCCP did, which was sell them off.
Can I mention the words Kiwibuild or Phil Twyford without getting banned for the site for a month?
Or Brownlee and Christchurch rebuild?
Perhaps the government expects rents to drop, so more can afford the lower rents then?
So often in the past I have looked at towering CBD buildings and had the strange feeling that in the future squatters would move in and no one would care.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/nyregion/coronavirus-work-from-home.html
Now a major energy company in N.Z. has sent a smooth toned letter to employees giving them the option of choosing whether or not to opt for working at home permanently.
How long before technology renders these workers redundant or a super nerd works out a way of alerting a sub contractor to a breakdown or assessing an account and sending it by way of your smart energy meter thereby making even the remaining minimilist groups of C.E.O.’s entirely unnessesary. Those who haven’t been offed by even newer and stranger disease pandemics will discover that having water and food supplies in their abandoned and near worthless shelters as the planet heats up needs more than the smarts.
Artificial intelligence is the enemy. Forget the sock puppet bureaucrats and politicians.
Who said this in 1917 ? “And those machines become in their forms less and ever less human, more ascetic, mystic, esoteric. They weave the earth over with an infinite web of subtle forces, currents and tensions. Their bodies become ever more and more immaterial, ever less noisy. Their wheels, rollers and levers are vocal no more. All that matters withdraws itself into the interior. Man has felt the machine to be devilish and rightly. It signifies in the eyes of the believer the deposition of God. It delivers sacred Causality over to man and by him, with a sort of foreseeing omniscience is set in motion, silent and irresistible. ”
Why it was that old German silly billy Spengler.
Here he is again: ” Nature becomes exhausted, the globe sacrificed to Faustian thinking in energies. ……….. It is the engineer who is remotest from the Classical law – thought, and he will see to it that his economy has its own law, wherein forces and efficiencies will take the place of Person and Thing.”
Well, there you go. Labour is useless. The left says the right wins. I say, serves you right when they do.
If this site doesn’t get that the real philosophy of Kiwi Build was for housing for all Kiwis whether ownership or housing NZ then I can’t continue to read your nonsense. Finally, Minto, you have convinced me that you see no diff between nats and Labour. No need for me to read this site again. I will remove it from my reading list.
Also, I gave you cash for receipt of a newsletter at a Papakura QPEC meeting in 2008. I never heard from you again. Then, I accepted you probably needed it for personal expenses and didn’t complain. Now I am. Give it back!
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