Labour’s shame – the government of kindness is protecting the incomes of middle-class landlords ahead of providing homes for those in desperate need.
When the Labour-led government came to power in 2017 there were 5844 people on the state house waiting list. Three years later there are 18,520 and rising rapidly.
In numbers that’s a 218% increase – on the ground that means an extra 12,676 families with severe housing needs – people cast aside by successive governments – people living in cars, vans, caravans, garages and rat-infested hovels.
The best Labour has offered was its announcement in this year’s budget of the building of 8,000 new state houses (actually only 6,000 will be state houses – the rest will come from community housing providers) over the next five years. Yes, you read that right. Even if Labour remains in government over the next eight years there will still be 10,520 people in desperate housing need – almost double the waiting list they inherited. Not to mention the extra families flooding onto the waiting list in the meantime.
There is no way Labour can spin this – it shouts INCOMPETENCE, UNKINDNESS and FAILURE writ large.
Why?
Labour is following National’s lead in keeping state house numbers low to force low-income families into private sector rentals and so maintain high rents for middle-class landlords.
The money is there to build the houses needed for those in desperate need but Labour is unmoved. They won’t do it. Their policy says they don’t care. They are forcing Kainga Ora (formerly Housing New Zealand) to borrow the money – at higher interest rates than the government could borrow it – so it doesn’t show up as debt on the government’s books.
The graph above is Labour’s shame. The party intends to coast to an election victory with no commitment to address the low-income housing crisis which has ballooned out of control under their ineptitude.
Instead of building state houses they are happy to provide massive subsidies to the nastiest of private landlords and property managers to keep homeless families off the TV news and keep middle-class landlords happy.
Indeed, John, the politics of kindness go only as far as protecting the interests of certain corporations. (and the banks, of course).
All we can say it it would be worse under National.
Thus, the coming election becomes, as always, the choice between the lesser of two (or many if you include NZF, ACT, the Greens etc.) evils.
The collapse of the system is inevitable,
‘Though many blame Donald Trump for dividing the nation, the nation was already disunited. Trump’s election simply added day-glo paint to the lines that had long been hardening between disunited, disaffected camps.
As I’ve explained over the years, disunity is the systemic source of collapse– not just of nations and empires but of enterprises and families. In other words, disunity is scale invariant: it breaks down marriages, family fortunes, partnerships, corporations, nations and empires with the same dynamics.
When challenges arise–and challenges always arise–the unified family, enterprise, nation or empire can make the shared sacrifices necessary to meet the crisis head-on, and not just survive, but as befits an anti-fragile system (as per Nassim Taleb’s definition of anti-fragility), become stronger as a result of adapting to the crisis.
The family, enterprise, nation or empire fragmented by profound disunity is incapable of not just shared sacrifices but of a shared consensus on how to proceed against challenges such as famine, pandemic and economic depression.
It is the nature of human existence that shared sacrifice is the glue that binds disparate individuals and groups into a unified and thus powerful entity. In the early days of the Roman Republic and Empire, the wealthiest citizens were taxed heavily to raise the money needed to defend Rome or prosecute wars of conquest.
The patrician class served as officers in the army, and it was their duty to serve in the front lines, and in some cases (such as the horrendous defeat at Cannae) suffer higher combat death rates that common soldiers.
Profound disunity is characterized by the recognition that favored elites make no sacrifices, and this injustice consumes the binds of civil unity. The elites benefit the most from the system, piling up enormous fortunes and great political power, while the disempowered masses make the sacrifices on the battlefield and pay the taxes.
This disunity is not only political; it is social, economic and cultural as the elites’ wealth soars in direct correlation to their unwillingness to make any sacrifices for the common good.
Grasping for power via philanthro-capitalist foundations is not a sacrifice; it’s just a PR spin on the same old elitist accumulation of self-serving influence.
Though the mechanics are obscured by the financial games of central banks and financiers, the commoners understand that the nation’s elites are parasitic and predatory, rigging the financial and political systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the nation and its citizenry.
Though it’s convenient to divide America into two camps, anti-Trump and pro-Trump, these camps are each fragmented into disparate interests. There is no middle ground in the nation and none within the various warring camps.
As the Federal Reserve gooses the stock market to new heights, America’s billionaires add hundreds of billions in additional wealth to their already obscene piles–piles largely untouched by taxes. In America, sacrifice has long been something demanded of the commoners: they fight the wars, they pay the taxes, they do the work and they sacrifice their health in jobs that only further enrich the few who reap all the gains while sacrificing nothing.
While America’s spoiled, parasitic elites indulge in financial and sexual debauchery, fraud and embezzlement, the commoners grow weary of the widening divide in wealth, income, power, health and ethics. America’s spoiled, parasitic elites are not just self-serving, greedy, and predatory; they’re overconfident and hubris-soaked.
As for the commoners–they’ve been fragmented for decades into warring camps, fighting over social mores, political theater and all the frustrations of the powerless: embittered by the erosion of security and fairness and the indignities of slaving away for corporations that enrich the few while impoverishing the many, exhausted by the insecurities of chronic under-employment and the exploitations of the gig economy, the commoners may eventually find common cause in overthrowing their exploitive elites.
Or they may just opt out of the whole insane charade and stop paying the mountains of debt and stop trying to prop up the deranging pretense of middle-class snobbery in favor of an honest, low-cost mode of living that dispenses with servitude to self-serving, greedy elites and their corporate-plantation technocrat overlords.
Could America Have a French-Style Revolution? (July 14, 2020)
Asking this is like asking, could the Western Roman Empire fall? Yes, it could, yes it did. Based on the nation’s multiple sources of profound disunity, collapse is only a matter of when, not if.’
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/08/how-nations-collapse-disunity.html
What’s this got to do with NZ state housing?
What sort of an excuse for a journalist do you claim to be on this issue when you neglect the most important number that would provide information about how relevant your claim is? I would like to know the total number of state houses when Labour began to govern compared to the number of state houses now (along with the number of people in them) before being able to make a decision about your claim.
I think the accommodation supplement is a subsidy to landlords as well although I am not sure how to remove it without causing harm to the tenants involved. Some sort of rent control is probably the answer though.
And maybe the reason that Labour are in government is why it has increased.People feel empowered to come forward seeking refuge. National were cold, calculated and spent 9 years selling off state home. Hardly much point putting your name forward on the housing register.
But you will get morons claiming these people need to help themselves, re- educate themselves, not have children, save harder, radiradira!
So those who live with fetal alcohol syndrome, severe mental illness, or any other spectrum disorder, lost everything through no fault of their own, are all marganalised by the morons who purport these people need to try harder.
Yes Labour need to do better but remember why they are in this position in the first place and also they are building not selling.
Yes Bert I was a state housing tenant for a number of years. And if you were a Maori you got put in the bronxs like areas often an ugly block of flats. National have knocked many of these down now and sold them to foreigners and people with money. But the racism and discrimination didn’t just happen under national, labour were just as bad. Nowadays they call it unconscious bias but really it was state employees carrying out racism for the government of the time.
Absolutely agree with Bert. People come forward with Labour in power, with National they didn’t bother or were very reluctant, knowing they would be vilified. Collins the bat’s comments just this morning about “the dole queue”enforces that the thinking is still the same.
Bonnie,
His input discredits what is an excellent site.
He obviously hasn’t noticed the Government has been just a bit busy addressing so much of the carnage they inherited and a few other minor issues such as the Christchurch massacre. the White Island volcano devastation and a small thing called Covid-19.
He even mocks the well needed and overdue politics of kindness.
Labour’s housing policy especially the flagship Kiwibuild has not produced the ambitious results they’d hoped. They are the first to own that and are obviously doing all they can to put it right. Would Minto prefer NZ goes back to a Government that couldn’t possibly care less about the housing crisis, that even denied there was a crisis and in many cases profited considerably by that status quo remaining?
So which carnage was that, I get a little tired of people saying it is all due to the last lot.
Wages not matching inflation, health budgets not matching inflation, overpopulation, infrastructure underfunding, creating a housing crisis, normalizing poverty and just this morning Collins and Bennett gleefully exclaiming the extremely important Clean Rivers policy will be “gone by lunchtime ” under National!
Hows that just for starters.
Michal,
Which carnage? The most concerning aspect of your question is that you’re serious. What a sad and tragic reflection on National Party supporters that they are so selfish and still walking around with their head in the clouds displaying their usual indifference toward all of the Kiwis that were hugely disadvantaged by National’s divisive policies. Oh well, at least the investment portfolios of the fortunate ones blossomed and National were able to describe the carnage they created as a “rock star economy”.
Many of things itemised about the wonderful Ardern party tidying up National’s mess continue to be pretty dreadful.
I live in Canterbury where our DHB is in a shambles because of the incompetence of Labour and because of the billions of dollars of underfunding for all of the health sector over the past 30 years as Bagshaw has been saying for a very long time.
Don’t make silly assumptions that I am a National party voter, never in my life. Labour, NLP, Alliance, Greens has been my trajectory.
Any party I have worked for formally and informally I have criticised that is democracy at work.
Given Shaw’s latest stupidity I am not sure what I will do, but I have always thought we should have compulsory voting but we must have a ‘no confidence vote’. Do those living in South Auckland think either of the major parties give a fig about them, I doubt it.
No one who knows me would consider me selfish at all.
And CGT on all but the family home/farm/business. Destroy the tax free capital gain. Residential property should not be an investment for “mum and dad investors”.
Or multiproperty landlords who are in it for the capital gain and who put the rents up when tenants can get the accommodation supplement.
RosieLee: “And CGT on all but the family home/farm/business.”
I used to think that too, until I read this:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/114628351/an-inconvenient-truth-about-tax-in-new-zealand
I was pretty hosed off at the current government’s rejection of a CGT. But, having read this piece, I was forced to concede that it was right to do so.
John Minto – you are reading the situation all wrong, we are going into the ‘Grenfell’ situation where there are housing authorities and layers of management in varies guises of social housing (charities are the new tax vehicle to avoid taxes) to make big bucks, while destroying quality of housing for the poor.
Social housing in NZ over the past decade is becoming big business to the private sector (sometimes dressed up as charities). Think motels as social housing, overseas businesses like Compass getting contracts for housing etc.
Like the situation in Victoria and Covid with the security guards. The government (taxpayers) paid $70 p/h for security guards, this was then washed though multiple subcontractors, until the security guards were on $20 p/h and tended to be overseas students with no training. That is the neoliberal model for housing too, taxpayers pay motel owners $1000 p/w and the tenant lives in one room for that price. Meanwhile the lefties are still screaming over a 3 bedroom private rental with garden for half the price.
Wake up, Minto and others, the new rental laws do not apply to social housing providers. The left are effectively creating a situation where rental businesses dressed up as social housing give their tenants less rights than they had under the Natz!
For a start, is it true that Compass renters can not go to the tenancy tribunal? Reports are Compass tenants share bathrooms and kitchens with others and if anything goes wrong they have to ring a phone number and nothing gets done… Also co insiding with bodies turning up in rental accomodation around NZ, from social housing run by quasi charities to university halls run by overseas rental providers.
My understanding is that the new laws mean that community housing can evict problem tenants but private rentals can not? Guess what will happen, all the Meth heads will be evicted from social housing and then go around and ruin the private rentals for the other tenants…… So there will be less choice for renters as the best deals for rentals tend not to be the overpriced business offerings springing up under the social housing labels. The NZ rental laws for the past decade are now clearly biased to encourage overseas businesses like Compass to prosper in NZ and ‘mum n dad’ landlords to sell up.
Can see going forward there will be a lot of problems and allow big international providers to take over the rental spaces in NZ… again the profits will be flowing overseas…. just like our banks when our government subjugates the local industries again and again with discriminative pro-foreign policy in NZ and then seem surprised NZ is getting poorer and poorer as a country.
Would it be worse under National – the numbers prove otherwise.
Yes it most certainly would, unless you can provide better evidence.
A massive State House/Apartment build is required–up to a 100,000 in all corners of the country. That would sink residential property speculation and neo rentiers once and for all, and provide a boost for training, employment and suppliers.
The boomer “Bach AND a renter” subset will likely be outnumbered by their successor generations as voters in the 2023 General Election, so it is time to move and return housing to being accomodation–rather than a tax free “nice little earner”. The byproduct of inflated property prices and private renting at extortionate rates strangely enough, is homelessness and or substandard garages, shacks, and cars!
The figures do not look good for Labour but various factors apply. This Govt. has stopped selling state stock unlike National, it does not do meth tests and evictions, and more people apply to Kainga Ora under a Labour Govt that just would not have bothered under National. Labour has slightly tightened conditions for landlords too for what it is worth. They have built several thousand state houses already also.
But it is not easy in our neo lib society–around the corner from me in Maunu, Whangārei, local middle class people raised $60,000 to try and stop 30 plus new state houses being built! Because they were scared for their property values and pre-hate who they imagine their new neighbours will be. Stopping fellow citizens from having warm dry housing has to be amongst the lowest action anyone could take. The local Councils and Independent Commissioners all gave the go ahead, but these reactionaries are fighting it to the wire with appeals.
None of my points negate John’s criticism at all really, just that National would have been even worse!
The last time Carmel Sepoolooni showed her face on the telly she explained to the world that the reason low income families exist is because of their ‘complex needs’, a foul smelling insinuation that the poor are responsible for their situation due to some hidden variable, perhaps their drug use, or gambling problems, or behaviour, or race, or demographic, or lack of fundamental Christianity. This phrase is trotted out whenever she appears as a batshit explanation for government failings and to assuage Sepolooni’s inherent social pathologies (perhaps recalcitrant parenting shame). The only one with complex needs is Sepolooni, this out-of-touch, worthless piece of work hiding out in the halls of the Beehive while robbing the New Zealand taxpayer of thousands of dollars a week for doing nothing.
Sorry, should read ‘low income homeless families’
What do you expect when we have Neo liberalism that isn’t working and never will when it is based on flawed ideology. As for the housing conundrum Labour have a better track record for building state housing than national. And the trouble is every time national get back in power they sell our state houses and any land for state houses so they can get out of this responsibility. And they usually dumped this responsibility on NGOs and other community groups. Now i see we have national admitting they made mistakes in housing, but they did it for three terms/nine years this is a pretty long time in politics to continue denying. Then they made it so much harder to get on the state housing list, locking thousands out and making them homeless. And we can’t forget their P policy which they used as measure to evict people. National have done too much damage in this area to ever be trusted again.
Minto has never claimed to be a journalist as far as I know.
I doubt whether there are stats about how many people actually live in them, but the other will be available.
What and you think this rant is going to change anything??? bahahahaha your deluded mate, the state housing rort has been going on for years and it aint gonna change cause there aint enough money or political kindness in the world that would have any govt be it left or right provide homes for the poor. Its like rubbish/recycling NO MONEY IN IT!! So lets all just accept that there are going to be homeless in our society and focus on what we can provide in terms of services. Also your numbers Id like to dig a little deeper and understand exactly who these numbers are on this list, bet ya I would find at least of 1/3 of imports in there that shouldn’t be entitled to anything.
No no no we should never accept that we are going to have homeless in our society.
We are wealthy nation!
As for this, I totally disagree.
1/3 of imports in there that shouldn’t be entitled to anything.
The unbridled greed on display again, we want free everything!!!!!!
Labor should build houses ………. so the government must provide……….. means the tax payer must pay. Why should they or I pay for it??
Take the initiative start a housing fund, donate your own money to it an build the houses.
Or rather focus on fixing the corrupt ponzi scheme. LOL look at the cost of a section in Auckland just a joke, stupid, unrealistic and fake, all for the sake of a ponzi run by the few benefactors.
You dont solve a problem by throwing money at it, remove what is fundamental corrupt aspects and the cost of housing will come down. Limit house ownership to 1 property and ban investment properties, you will have 40 000 investment properties that is currently unoccupied available to house people in. Imagine what that will do for house affordability. Start a pension scheme to replace housing as an income source.
But how do you get property addicts to quit? How to you eliminate the housing “wealth illusion” in NZ? It is all driven by greed!
Do we want to raise the Newsroom article now – $3,000 per week for an uninsulated shit box in South Auckland. Plenty of kindness to slum lords from this government.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others
Woodhouses mysterious “homeless man” responsible for Paula Bennetts mysterious Meth houses.
National the slumlord government.
yes the better stats would be numbers of state houses actually occupied.
i was working in a whanau advocacy role during National’s reign and was shocked to hear from a housing nz person, in a meeting intended to get accommodation for someone, that to get onto the waiting list people have to be homeless. staying in a car or a garage or on a couch did not count as they had a roof over their head. at the same time a friend was in a housing nz flat and had struggled for years to get the oven fixed. the strategy then was to let properties get so rundown you couldnt do anything with them but sell.
the change to actual tenancies will give a better picture over time.
and none of that excuses labour for not doing more.
I wouldn’t panic. When Nick Smith is the new Housing Minister things will be sorted.
bahahaha Nick Smith of the do nothing for 9 years Nick Smith…..oh you gonna be so disappointed. Now go fark off to some river thats been polluted and take a big long drink go on dunk your head in it and swirl it all around and you can thank Nick Smith for that.
Not to mention their absolute failure on healthcare. Dhb’s cutting services and laying off staff and hiring less in an unprecedented healthcare crisis and labour doesn’t have a single policy or intention to help to reform them.
Ugh
I may have miised it, but one very important point seems to have been completely missed in both the article, and the comments.. (apologies if someone has brought this up here).. Namely that the last government was doing a masterful job of pushing people off the waiting lists, or changing the criteria to make eligibility much harder to attain.. I can reasonably confidently assume that the waiting list has ballooned out since the removal of the american bankers party.. There is extensive building going on around the country.( I have contacts throughout the building industry, and they are all flat out).. The bottom line is, that if we want this agenda to move forward at a faster pace, then party vote labour.. Kick winny the boat anchor out, which removes the (appearance of?) obstacles within government to do what’s necessary in timely fashion.. No excuses once they have an outright majority… I must say that I am a bit disappointed that a person as smart as John would fail to make the connection between people suddenly feeling like they can actually get on the waiting list now, who had been cut out of the picture altogether under the bankers cabal.. leading to a surge in applications.. In 2017, before the election, there were 40,000 people officially homeless as a result of the bankers policies… A bit of realism, and perspective would go a long way to avoiding pointless, and self defeating misinformation coming from those who are supposed to be on our side..
stefan – your dead right – ‘the last government was doing a masterful job of pushing people off the waiting lists, or changing the criteria to make eligibility much harder to attain……’
Ditto for Winz and beneficiaries.
Shout out to Aucklanders, doing the lockdown at level 3. Cheers from the Naki.
Excellent article, John.
This needs to be shouted loud from every rooftop rental.
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” Labour is following National’s lead in keeping state house numbers low to force low-income families into private sector rentals and so maintain high rents for middle-class landlords”….
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And THIS :
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” Instead of building state houses they are happy to provide massive subsidies to the nastiest of private landlords and property managers to keep homeless families off the TV news and keep middle-class landlords happy”…
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And much of the ‘housing stock’ that remains? – are fetid, moldy, damp cold piles of shit. So in my view , not only must there be mass renovations, stringent legislation passed to prevent capitalist vultures, – but also the sort of mass building we had under Michael Joseph Savage.
And f@ck the bloody capitalists.
Their tears are delicious.
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