IT COULD BE DONE. This government could make a serious attempt to house the 20,000 people waiting for social housing before the next election. It would, however, require them to do something they have, so far, showed no willingness to do: think outside the neoliberal box – like socialists.
Part of the present problem – quite a large part – is the sheer logistical difficulty in gearing up New Zealand’s already over-extended construction industry to meet the overwhelming quantum of need. This isn’t 1936, there aren’t tens-of-thousands of carpenters, roofers, plumbers, electricians and other construction workers desperate for employment. That’s the challenge. Finding the human and other resources needed to house the homeless.
To make any impression on this problem it will be necessary to import workers from abroad. This was key to the successful Christchurch re-build, and it will likely be the key to solving the housing crisis. The question is: where are we to find the expertise and labour force required to accommodate 20,000+ people in less than three years?
There is only one place to go looking for this sort of assistance – the Peoples Republic of China. Few nations on earth have a construction workforce large enough to take on such a massive job, but China does. The Chinese have been building infrastructure all over Africa for more than 20 years. They are used to deploying hundreds – sometimes thousands – of workers to foreign lands and then bringing them home when these country-to-country joint ventures are completed. They have even more experience in constructing accommodation for the hundreds-of-thousands of Chinese citizens who every year abandon the rural interior of China for its burgeoning coastal cities. In the space of just a few years whole new cities have risen out of the ground.
This is what New Zealand’s government needs to do: enter into a joint-venture with the Chinese Government to construct massive, multi-storied, housing complexes in which all those New Zealanders in urgent need of warm, dry, affordable and secure accommodation can find it.
Interestingly enough, the designs for precisely this sort of mass accommodation, along with the social infrastructure necessary to ensure that it is translated into viable and vibrant communities, already exist. They were drawn up nearly three-quarters-of- a-century ago, by the Department of Housing Construction of the Ministry of Works. Had Labour won the 1949 general election, Auckland, in particular, would have been a very different city. Not so much a poor man’s version of Los Angeles, as a lucky man’s version of Copenhagen or Stockholm. (One more disaster to set at the National Party’s door!)
Of course every China-hating xenophobe and red-baiter will throw up their hands in horror at such an out-there suggestion. Their problem, however, is not being able to come up with any viable suggestions of their own. Where, for example, would they lay their hands on the skilled workforce necessary to erect ten, twenty, thirty housing complexes? As things now stand, New Zealand would be hard-pressed to erect the accommodation for the workers needed to build the accommodation!
The only way to get ahead of the ever-lengthening state house waiting-list is to build big and build fast. We simply don’t have time to recruit and train the people necessary to do the job ourselves. No sooner had we assembled a workforce large enough to tackle the problem, than we would be faced with assembling another, even larger, one!
Maybe, if we could outbid the wage rates of Australia’s construction industry, or America’s, availing ourselves of China’s could be avoided. But, you know how it goes: a few extra billion here, and few extra billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking serious money! Besides, how keen would the government of either of those countries be to involve themselves in such an openly socialistic programme? Nowhere near as keen as the comrades in Beijing!
The other objection which is certain to be raised is that why on earth would New Zealanders consent to living like the citizens of Singapore or Shanghai? How long would it take for these huge, rapidly-constructed apartment buildings to turn into high-rise slums?
The answer to that question would be ours to frame. There are ways to ensure that even large, high-rise apartment complexes are embedded in the sort of social and economic matrices that make the slide into slum status impossible. By building schools, medical facilities, shopping-centres, police stations and youth centres into the plans, the feelings of isolation and abandonment that have historically contributed to the development of slums can be avoided. Similarly, by ensuring that these apartments are situated in employment-, transport- and recreational-rich zones, the complex networks making for vibrant communities can be hard-wired into the project.
The proof of this concept can be found in the tragic history of “Red Vienna”. So successful was the post-World War I construction of worker housing in the Austrian capital, and so vibrant the socialist working-class culture it created, that the right-wing Austrian government ordered the Austrian Army to destroy the workers’ quarter of Vienna with shellfire in the bitter class conflicts of 1934. The enormous danger embodied in Vienna’s example of what the progressive imagination could produce, if given the chance, had to be eliminated – no matter at what human cost.
And this is the reason why this present government, barring a change of heart of truly Damascene proportions, will not dare to go down this path. Not only would such a truly transformational joint-venture between Wellington and Beijing produce something very close to panic in Washington and Canberra, but it would also cause near-fatal conniptions at Treasury and in just about every other neoliberal institution across the country.
Socialism doesn’t grow out of thin air: it emerges from an infrastructure in which collectivism – not individualism – has been encoded in institutions’ standard operating procedures. The creation of carefully-planned, well-resourced, state-owned apartment complexes: the result of co-operation between the Labour Party Government of New Zealand and the Communist Party Government of China; marking the end of homelessness for 20,000 of the country’s poorest citizens; would not only be a red flag to the Right’s most vicious bulls, but also the best thing that happened to the New Zealand working-class in three-quarters-of-a-century.
At last, the Politics of Kindness could take on the indisputable solidity of bricks-and-mortar, and, finally, the Prime Minister’s promised “transformation” could begin.
Excellent proposal. But this is the super conservative do nothing Labour 2020, Jacinda just this week clinging to and by inference, praising the Reserve Bank Act like Roger Douglas was still Finance Minister and when we knew no better.
Jacinda said all the right words upon forming a government in 2017, transformative, attacking child poverty, backed by Kiwibuild and some truly different approaches to transport to bolster her climate change goals.
2020, not so much. Actually, not at all.
Burned by Kiwibuild and Phil Twyford Jacinda has concluded that there are no problems anymore and if you promise nothing and most importantly do nothing and stay really really still barring a disaster of some form, they’ll get through the next 3 years and get re-elected.
Housing therefore is not a problem that cannot be solved, if there was one, which there is not, by minor tinkering around the edges purely for marketing purposes. Not this silly building roofs and most outrageously, affordable ones, to put over her people’s heads.
Moving right along…
Great comment. Sadly this kind of visionary thinking will be completely disregarded by the wellington power elite. We should certainly be looking for ways that our ever closer economic ties with China can be utilized so as to advantage us as a nation, and lift the worker class in particular.
‘finally, the Prime Minister’s promised “transformation” could begin’
Surely it is now evident that Adern’s ‘promise’ was as empty as John Key’s ‘Better brighter future’ and was simply an electioneering slogan geared to pulling in votes.
This government is a one-trick act -keeping the border under surveillance- in a global neoliberal circus in which the canopy is on fire. And keeping the border is not particularly difficult when there is no boarder as such, just thousands of kilometres of not-easy-to-cross water.
The Maori had the right ideas: raupo huts, local food cultivation, harvesting from the foreshore, and population control via inter-tribal warfare. Once Europeans arrived and started cutting down trees en masse it all started to go badly wrong.
The good news for Maori who want to return to traditional ways of living is that ‘the experiment’ of Industrial Civilisation is coming to an end, as it rapidly consumes or destroys all the factors -plentiful fossil fuels, stable climate, biodiversity etc. -necessary for its continuation.
The exact timing of collapse is difficult to predict but we know we are at close to 420 ppm atmospheric CO2 (and rising superfast) and that anything above 350 ppm is dangerously destabilising (as evidenced by the fastdisappearing Arctic ice); we are past the peak of both conventional extraction and unconventional extraction of oil; the financial system that facilitates ‘development’ (going backwards ecologically and socially ) is in crisis; the global food system is in crisis (as a consequence of appalling practices within the system and restrictions on using ‘peasants’ from impoverished nations to do the actual work and environmental factors).
The attempts by ‘the powers that be’ to stave off collapse are all counter-productive, and it is simply the [false] notion of hope in a better future ingrained into the minds of a large portion of the populace (even as everything gets made worse) that is holding most of the system together.
Recent months have all been ‘the hottest ever’ and according to the forecasters, we are in for a very hot summer, with the high likelihood of severe drought and bushfires. And this is just a mere taste of what is to come.
Expansion of the dysfunctional arrangements that characterise NZ cities and provincial centres would clearly be a disastrous mistake….and therefore will be the official plan, since the lunatics are running the asylum.
Well I see some of our people are living in trees up North but no good if we keep cutting them down maybe we might have to go back to caves too.
vivid is pa: “….we might have to go back to caves too.”
Some of our people still live in caves, as they’ve done time out of mind. France and Austria: no doubt other parts of Europe as well. Very comfy digs, I hear: excellent control of temperature variations.
Then there’s Coober Pedy in South Australia, where our people live underground. Makes sense, given the scorching temperatures in that part of the world
covid is pa: “vivid” Apologies: that was supposed to be “covid”. Bloody auto-edit! Grrr….. I wasn’t quite quick enough to spot it.
China will want their pound of flesh and it’s likely our sovereignty that is the price. Have a look at how China manipulates our pacific neighbours on the back of infrastructure programs. You could also say goodbye to any criticism of the muslim camps and militarisation of the South China Sea.
Is our independence worth a few roads and apartment blocks. I would argue no.
The other issue of course is it is not just a housing issue its an infrastructure issue. Upgrading of transport links, sewerage and waste water, schools and community essentials such as parks need to be thought out as part of any major build.
There is no magic solution or silver bullet. It took 40 years to arrive at this juncture it will require at least half of that to fix
Do we really have independence Frank.
That proposed Auckland planning, which Chris has drawn attention to before, is interesting indeed. What the Nats delivered was roads! instead of anything resembling a “garden city”, and locked in Auckland’s sprawl and road/motorway expansion for decades. The private car was elevated above public transport, and trucks the ultimate capitalist declaration of progress and “how things are”–and you lot better get used to it.
Some provincial towns upgraded post WWII still show where NZ could have headed with town planning–wide streets and spacious town centres encouraging public participation in civic affairs. Architecture has always been strongly associated with politics and power.
Anyone that genuinely wondered where a Labour Govt. might head with the Winston handbrake off, now has their answer–nowhere! The Chinese idea would be great, but is not likely to happen in my lifetime. What about sourcing flat pack dwellings though, including tiny houses for homeless, from China and Europe? That might encourage local builders and developers and suppliers to co-operate with the Govt. rather than go on strike as they essentially did over Kiwibuild. Yes on the face of it they did not want to take on lower margin jobs, but, there was the strong whiff of not wanting to help out “Communist Jacinda” and a Labour Govt. as well.
Nope, Nope, Nope
“enter into a joint-venture with the Chinese Government to construct massive, multi-storied, housing complexes in which all those New Zealanders in urgent need of warm, dry, affordable and secure accommodation can find it.”
How about we just train our own workers to build the houses, seems like that was pretty easy post second world war when the returning soldiers built the state houses that last longer than the overseas built leaky buildings.
NZ has a demand problem for housing, aka we are swamping our country with new residents who all need housing. Same with health, schools, transport, jails, justice, superannuation – we are even running out of water in NZ! Less people, more self reliance is the message from Covid and the last decades where NZ has developed major problems we didn’t used to have.
NZ has been using foreign construction workers for decades now and poor materials, and it’s all going wrong!
The Detail: New Zealand is still building leaky homes
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-detail/117617601/the-detail-new-zealands-leaky-homes-saga-is-a-long-way-from-sorted
Concrete safety investigator ‘surprised nobody had been killed’
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/402908/concrete-safety-investigator-surprised-nobody-had-been-killed
Multi-storey building flaws ‘almost the norm’
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/340396/multi-storey-building-flaws-almost-the-norm
Apartment complex hit with $32.8m repair bill
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/331505/apartment-complex-hit-with-32-point-8m-repair-bill
Council unable to identify possible defective buildings in capital
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/403417/council-unable-to-identify-possible-defective-buildings-in-capital
Example of Chinese construction
Coronavirus quarantine hotel collapses, trapping 70
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/03/coronavirus-quarantine-hotel-collapses-trapping-70.html?fbclid=IwAR3keDUeES_JIX2BwpHqhEBIHoek2OLPNSQsBOQBEkA6dJ7y-LLHaiJPhyg
Asbestos Chinese trains for Kiwirail
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/306419/chinese-train-makers-repeatedly-told-no-asbestos
So you mind I’d I ask how old you are @SaveNZ?
I’ll bet you do mind but you remind me of a student that does all the right things to tick the necessary boxes.
Politically, I agree with most of the stuff and things you say, except for some “fundamentals” you’re prepared to overlook when you advance your arguments. Especially with immigration matters. (like for example that many of the immigrant folk you find no sympathy for were LIED to by our gummint).
Pisses me off somewhat because I imagine you’d probably one of the first to protest how badly the Okkers treat NuZullner deportees.
@ Timtimorwhateverthehandlr – I’m gen X, and Nope, I don’t have much sympathy for the NZ/OZ criminals and gang members who are being deported back to NZ.
I think NZ should adopt OZ rules and deport our own migrant criminals, as soon as they first offend. Maybe we could have exited Tarrent earlier if that had been the case.
When you move to someone else’s country, the number one rule should be don’t victimise other people living there.
Not much compassion and help ever gets shown to victims of crime in my opinion in either country and those who migrate or visit another country who can’t obey the laws, should be shown the door immediately, especially violent, immigration/labour exploitation, sexual crime, drugs and fraud. Those criminals are NZ’s favourites to give permanent residency to tho.
Never hear the lefties fuming about exploitation, calling for maximum penalty and deportation for migrant exploiters… they tend to support the migrant exploiters and want more rich international students and workers to come to NZ and take up the housing.
Then I guess the land around NZ gets developed and we get our produce from China and OZ.
The reason NZ is in such a mess with growing local poverty is that nobody especially the left have much practical help to give them. Lefties are just as brainwashed.
The right and left now all agree, especially build high rises with foreign labour, don’t worry about water or food supply, waste water, sewerage or pollution or anything else. Build, build, build!
By the wa,y they already have been building up a storm around Auckland but developers building houses are costing $700k+ and working people can’t afford them on NZ wages or they are 1 hour commute away or with apartments full of leaks and huge body corp. fees.
Very good wee article.
And where did so many of our tradies and professionals go after the destruction of our workforce in the aftermath of Roger Douglas’s destructive neo liberal deforms? Why, – Australia of course! What a beautiful way to justify importing cheap labour from non unionized country’s? And so they did. Lots of them. And as every good neo liberal knows, they can always ‘ outsource’ these issues and import a few 100,000 more. That is,…. assuming one really wants to acknowledge homelessness as an issue in the first place and throw away the golden goose known as rising house prices . And what’s wrong with polytech’s training apprentices? Heaven forbid we actually embed apprentices with employers when we can profiteer on those students and keep the whole ponzi scheme happening?
Ah yes, – problems , problems , problems ,… but shhhhh ! ,… just never let on that we had the answers all along…
J.J Cale / Lies
https://youtu.be/L_xbZMQCfqo?t=82
NZ could also easily create affordable housing in two easy ways without massive construction and costs.
First allow kitchens and conversions into large homes to make ‘Granny flats’. At present the councils would cut off their Granny/the homelessness right leg, than consent an affordable granny flat in an existing house.
NZ is full of two story houses that can easily be made into two flats with the addition of another Kitchen. These houses are often in ‘good areas’, with gardens, which are a lot nicer to live in for the poor, than concrete jungles. The addition of a kitchen/change to two flats should be a small building fee to the council and not the massive and fruitless exercise it is at present.
Secondly allow self contained tiny houses automatic rights to be erected as long as they are not visible to neighbours and for a nominal charge of $2000 for the consents, they should not be considered a dwelling if they are transportable. For example many people have land but it’s illegal to put a cheap tiny house on – similar to be able to rent them out. At present caravans can be rented out to renters, but much nicer tiny more eco homes are often illegal!
The reason that the above easy to execute ideas, get no traction is that big business can’t make much money out of it and it empowers the average Joe to get more income while making competition for cheaper rentals by adding in, quickly and cheaply, more one and two bed flats into urban areas.
Doing so would probably add 20% new units into both the city (existing house to granny flat conversion) and country (self contained, off grid, tiny houses).
But the catch is that it would drop developer and land banking profits and help curb the torturous council consenting process for a modest home…. Oh My God, can’t have neoliberal profiteering models dropped!
It makes me smile ruefully when we on the left consider something to be a huge problem that needs to be addressed and no one else even registers the issue. And I mean the issue of housing the poor not getting middle class 20 somethings onto the property ladder. When 60% of your population are property owners and a good portion of them are landlords electoral math dictates who the government will take care of. The idea that you’d increase housing supply and remove one of the biggest drivers of middle class wealth in the countries history is ludicrous. Economically the housing shortage is a huge goose laying golden eggs all over country. A goose we collectively fatten with 2 billion in rental subsidies every year to ensure above market rent is delivered to landlords. No politician is going near that goose not until home ownership rates fall well below 50%. Housing problem? Only for some.
Your answer is to bring in chinese slave labour. No doubt a condition of the deal will be our silence on Hong Kong and to cut ties with Taiwan.
No thank you.
Turn a blind eye to human rights as the same time.
China’s 260 concentration camps are proof of pure evil
https://nypost.com/2020/08/28/chinas-260-concentration-camps-are-proof-of-pure-evil/
I had another thought on this, Chris.
We could solve the housing crisis more or less overnight without building anything.
When I left Auckland many years ago there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of multi-bedroom mansions (many with Greek temple facades) largely unoccupied because the [mostly Asian] owners lived overseas and used the mansions as a foot in the door should things turn bad overseas, or as dumping places for semi-abandoned wives. Presumably the number of semi-uninhabited mansions has increased in recent years.
A tax on such properties would encourage better utilisation of what housing stock we have.
Also, there are thousands of hotels and motels which will NEVER be utilised as overnight accommodation (despite the wet dreams of people in the remnant of the tourism sector). Nationalism them and convert them into cheap rental accommodation for the poor.
The reason we have a housing crisis is because there is no political will to solve it, and a shortage of housing keeps rents high -in line with neoliberal thinking.
It’s much the same with every other crisis we are now facing. Even if there is no solution as such to them, we could stop making matters worse. But there is no political will to even do that.
Well said the whole post makes such sense and it is simple so you can guarantee it will not be taken up .
Where are the committees the endless enquiries headed by old mates from the retired politician poll the reports that then get ignored.
I read somewhere there are 80 thousand unoccupied houses in Auckland. In Christchurch we have 3 in our street vacant for over a year .
Long live Milton Friedman eh – supply side all the way
constant focus on increasing supply – where is the focus or discussion around demand?
what is being demanded? by whom? and for what?
third rate s***boxes, from slave wage economies is not an answer. Resurrecting 1950’s planning schemes are not an answer. We already have plenty in our country, we just won’t share it around.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmg84Mghylc7CAjiHGq-RxVgFan_0VVSXf3Q&usqp=CAU
Chris:
> Their problem, however, is not being able to come up with any viable suggestions of their own.
Rather than invite the Chinese to start turning Aotearoa into another Hong Kong, we could:
– put an immediate moratorium on the demolition of liveable housing
– respect basic squatting rights, so landlord’s have to renovate their houses to meet the housing WOF to get rental income
– get rid of the anti-freedom camping restrictions that make it hard to live in a mobile home from, so those who enjoy that lifestyle can free up housing for others who don’t
– free up disused empty sections in and near towns and cities for tiny house communities, temporary or where possible permanent
– fund tiny house construction schemes in each community with a housing shortage, so people can design and build their own homes, with oversight from tradespeople
– identify lonely boomers living in family size homes and match them up with compatible young families or single people who can pay rent and keep them company.
– create financial or regulatory incentives for the construction industry to build more affordable housing, and fewer McMansions, hotels, parking buildings and roads.
That’s just off the top of my head. We need the Belt and Road treatment like we need a hole in the head.
Spot on,
You are on the case, Chris. I presume the elegantly written Austenesque essay in today’s O.D.T. is appearing elsewhere around the country: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Labour Government in possession of a good majority, must be in want of the will to behave like one”.
You quote the All Things Bright and Beautiful verse:
“The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate”
Well, at least that poor man had a gate. For modestly paid millennials, for whom a “gate” might come with a price of half a mill or more, a gate is out of the question.
Hmmm. Not sure about your Chinese plan, though. Well, maybe; I’m no expert. But I reckon we should stop all immigration except for absolutely key people; and put any refugee acceptances on hold indefinitely. We can’t even house our own! –> https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/woes-worsen-list-grows
Locally, there’s the question of housing the (possibly foreign) workers who will build the new hospital. How about the Deep Cove solution: park a cruise ship in the harbour?
You can’t cry low wages (which we suffer from) and Chinese’s labour at the same time.
We already have mass dilution of kiwi wages by low skilled labour immigration, let’s make it worse, worsening the poverty cycle that caused the homelessness in the first place!
Also yes you would be building future slum housing, look a5 the UK
There is no quick fix, we need an economy that delivers prosperity for workers over shareholders to prevent poverty and homelessness, not build barns to stick them in.
Also tax the shit out of property speculators.
1) Stop unskilled labour immigration so
2) Kiwi companies invest in kiwi labour apprenticeships and upskilling
4) Employment law with penal rates firmly in employee favour to generate liveable income
5) Decentralise Wellington and Auckland business and government departments to The “provinces”
There is an entire country with spare houses outside the Auckland Wellington echo chamber that isn’t stuck in traffic and hogging infrastructure spending to stand still.
Oops number scramble 🙂
+1 Keepcalmcarryon
Very creative proposal, Chris Trotter. I like it.
Certainly, PR China has all the resources for efficient and professional construction works.
https://www.enr.com/toplists/2017-Top-Chinese-Contractors
In different countries I have seen some of those operating – quite impressive, indeed.
They may have some shortcomings on the participatory and the environmental side, though. But they certainly are fast, talented and eager learners…
If one aims for a quick impact, your suggestion is a promising way to go,
The project could well be combined with a number of ideas and thoughts sketched out by some of the commentators.
Such project would need
– political vision
– political – technical management skill
– technical skills in all implementation support services
– cross-sectoral monitoring capacity
Does AONZ have sufficient of these?
Well I have two nephews building hundreds of flats in Auckland , after starting off in Hamilton with their Ma. One is focusing on studio apartments catering mostly for singles and pre family couples, and the government when last I heard was wanting to buy everything from completed developments to those in the planing stage only. So I think the government might have acquired more housing than is generally understood.
The other is into more up market 3 and 4 bedroom apartments some with an appeal to comfortably off tenants and owner occupiers. Most of these latter are being purchased by investors who will never live in them and will not let them. They are an investment like bitcoin or gold, or shares or futures. The potential “unearned increment of association” or speculative profit is what is mostly driving the market , to these people tenants are akin to an infestation of rats in a house you can’t be close enough to to look after.
Someone a couple of days ago said that there are at least 40 000 such empty investment houses in Auckland.Just twice the number of people looking for housing as identified by Chris in his opening remarks. Pricking the price escalation bubble is what would be most effective. Once the self generating promise of profit from an investment is dashed then renting becomes attractive and necessary, or sale to someone why is happy to be a landlord.
To solve the problem quickly the government should buy up any and all unoccupied housing that comes on the market and tenant it.As well as building their own with local labour. Diverting some of that workforce from building private flats and houses for investors that will not be occupied in the foreseeable future ,into building for the government .
David Stone: “….studio apartments catering mostly for singles and pre family couples…”
I wonder how large they are. A few years ago, we bought an apartment in the Auckland CBD. It’s close to the UoA, and used by a relative who’s been a student there.
We looked at many apartments before we bought; in the end, we discounted studios, because those we saw were too small, even for one person. I’d hope that newer builds are more spacious, especially if developers expect couples to live in them.
“…the government when last I heard was wanting to buy everything from completed developments to those in the planing stage only.”
I’ll bet it is. However, I’m not sure how many on the state house waitlist are singles or childless couples. I do hope that the government doesn’t attempt to squash families into studio digs. But I wouldn’t put it past that lot.
“Most of these latter are being purchased by investors who will never live in them and will not let them. They are an investment like bitcoin or gold, or shares or futures.”
And here’s why many investors are unwilling to let properties. And from our experience, I can’t say that I blame them:
https://i.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/renting/123486560/auckland-tenants-sons-got-angry-put-41-holes-in-walls-and-doors-of-rental
The apartment which we own is in a pleasant, not-particularly-new building. Until this year, we’ve had no issues with tenants, who were mostly international students or visiting academics.
Unfortunately, from very early this year, we began to have problems: vandalism in the common areas (which I’ve personally seen), intimidation, drug dealing and frequent police callouts. In the early months, there was a security guard on duty most of the time: the body corporate had been obliged to hire one.
It turns out that one absentee owner was using a property management agency which specialises in providing social housing. And these were the tenants causing all the problems.
I wrote to the body corporate, expressing my dismay at this turn of events. Other owners did the same. The body corp chair was of the view that social housing tenants were unused to apartment living. But that’s not so at all: the issues are those of drug addiction and the concomitant mental illnesses, along with either an inability or unwillingness to look after other people’s property.
When we were looking to buy in the Auckland CBD, we specifically discounted all those apartment buildings where the Housing Corporation (or whatever they’re called now) owned apartments. As part of due diligence, we’d read the body corporate minutes, and it was blindingly obvious, the sorts of problems they were having. We wished to avoid anything of that sort.
“…tenants are akin to an infestation of rats in a house you can’t be close enough to to look after.”
When one sees the damage some tenants can do nowadays, it’s not surprising that investors aren’t renting out houses.
I grew up in poverty. For a time, we lived in a state house. Thus I have in the past tended to come down on the side of tenants. But: problems of the sort we’ve recently experienced in our building, and as reported in that link above, were unheard-of back then. No drug problems at that time, of course.
“To solve the problem quickly the government should buy up any and all unoccupied housing that comes on the market and tenant it.”
If the government intends to buy apartments, it would do well to buy up an entire building. That would spare the rest of us law-abiding citizens from the consequences of having social housing tenants in our buildings.
If NZ wishes to divert investment in properties which are then left vacant, one tool the Reserve Bank could consider is to raise interest rates. Then those with money in the bank would get a decent return on it, instead of having to rely for that on vaulting property prices.
I spent more than ten years living and working in China. I passed by Chinese construction sites on my way to work everyday. My Chinese wife and I bought an apartment that we still have.
Builders deciding to put a window in a brick wall after it had been completed. So get a sledge hammer and smash holes for windows in the completed wall( cracks spreading out from smashed holes). Constant use of substandard materials( bricks I could break in my hand,warped timber that had not been properly seasoned, exposed wiring). Foreman and managers supervising their casual labour by beating them with pick handles. Central heating that sprayed hot water from leaks everywhere as soon as it was turned on(it turned out the blokes who installed it knew nothing about plumbing-but needed the job so they said they did)
The thieves who broke into my and other apartments using their knowledge of how locks worked. When police caught them it turned out they were construction workers owed three months wages by their employer( who had done a runner). The poor bastards were stealing for food and to get back to the rural areas they came from.
I could go on for hours but ,for sure, we do not need this here and the asbestos in trains debacle shows we cannot successfully get Chinese firms to comply with our laws. We have a population of five million now so why can we not build as many houses as when we had less than three million? For that matter why can the people not renting houses now just be allowed to own them? After all that is what Mao Ze Dong did when he killed landlords and redistributed land to tenant farmers. I believe he also took over all the foreign firms in China and nationalised them without compensation to owners.
Surely that would put us on good terms with the Chinese Communist Party?
Right now as I drive all over Auckland I see lots of multi-unit two and three-storey apartments and townhouses being built on our suburban street corners. Many of these by Chinese developers and workers.
May be millennials and empty nesters will like these but most kiwi families with kids will continue to seek a lifestyle which includes a back yard.
+1 Stevie, construction in NZ is a scam and full of scam labour and poor quality work and liquidations. Fix that, don’t add more fire to it.
Race to the bottom for labour around the world. NZ can’t compete unless we adopt the same forced labour and free labour measures in NZ. Many including unions and the left seem to have joined forces with the right wingers to support the countries and Nationals championing and exporting forced labour.
UK sourced PPE from factories secretly using North Korean slave labour
Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds evidence that Chinese PPE factories supplying UK government are breaking UN sanctions
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/20/uk-sourced-ppe-from-factories-secretly-using-north-korean-slave-labour
Christmas card ‘cry for help’: in the Chinese prison at the centre of forced labour claims
Message allegedly came from Shanghai Qingpu prison, which holds 170 foreign male inmates
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/23/inside-chinese-qingpu-prison-forced-labour-claims-tesco-christmas-card
SaveNZ: I wouldn’t take the word of anything you see in the Guardian.
Ever since its offices were raided by the security services at the time of the wiki leaks furore in the late noughties, it’s been an obedient publisher of Sino- and Russophobia for the UK government.
If we as a polity wish China to stay out of NZ’s domestic affairs, our polity ought to refrain from criticising China’s domestic affairs. What happens there is none of our business, even were it the case that we were privy to verifiable information. China is a sovereign state, just as NZ is supposed to be. We wish to trade with China: let’s just do that.
If China has the resources to help with our housing shortage, so much the better. The government can and should dictate what it requires; it’s up to China to indicate whether it can meet those requirements.
The UK has a bloody cheek, banging on about Hong Kong and democracy. Ditto the US: well, they’d know all about democracy in various parts of the world, wouldn’t they!
The UK stole that territory from China in the first place, and ran it as a colony, right up until handover to the PRC. It was never a democracy while the Brits ruled it.
Note that Macau was a Portuguese possession, until it was handed back to the PRC in the late 90s. Remind me: when was the last time we heard about agitation for democracy from there? That’s right: never. That’s because the Portuguese packed up and left at handover. They didn’t hang around trying to make trouble, as have the UK and the US with regard to Hong Kong.
No free plug intended here, but I walked through one of these Shanghai-built prefabs in Hobsonville. Four containers make one three-bedroom house. Looked pretty good.
https://modul.co.nz/why-modul/how-it-works-the-modul-process/?fbclid=IwAR26onJc8RQ-kw6AJsiRXwfXuWig2qYCcrN0jXmLqWQH4wZh2uGtQ4ajlSQ
Talk to any building inspector in Auckland and they ALL mention the nightmare of visiting worksites with mainly Chinese workforce about non-compliant work. Also, corruption of NZ_ Chinese Engineers signing off dodgy work.
Not being an anti-China xenophobe or red-baiter. I have a viable suggestion.
Let’s reject partisan communist and capitalist propaganda.
Let’s concentrate on the facts instead.
Fact: There is no housing shortage
I repeat there is no shortage of housing.
Ignore for a moment the self serving propaganda of the developers, the land grabbers, the capital gains speculators, the greedy capitalist, (and the oppressive communist), exploiters of migrant labour.
And admit the fact that there are, according to the last census, 39,393, perfectly livable empty houses just in Auckland alone. Enough to satisfy the whole country’s housing needs. We don’t need to build anymore.
Want to cool the overheated New Zealand housing market?
Want to house the homeless?
Let’s make it illegal, (except in emergency circumstances), to allow any livable house, or apartment to remain untenanted, or unsold, for more than 6 months on pain of punitive fines.
Vancouver did it. We can too.
Vacant homes in Vancouver continue to dwindle due to empty homes tax: mayor
By Sean Boynton Global News
Posted February 7, 2020 9:48 pm
https://globalnews.ca/news/6523554/empty-homes-tax-results-2019/
Think it is bad now with unsold Kiwi build houses and the taxpayer having to underwrite the developers losses?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/08/kiwibuild-tweaked-to-allow-up-to-a-quarter-of-unsold-homes-into-the-open-market.html
Think we have problems with unsold Kiwi build houses now?
Prepare for it to get worse, much worse.
A warning from Malaysia regarding the dangers of bringing in Chinese migrant workers during a speculative housing market.
Chinese Property Projects in Southern Johor: Should We Be Concerned?
By Ong Kian Ming (Head, Penang Institute in KL)[1] | Posted on23 August 2017
Chinese investments in Southern Johor have split the property development into a high-end market with excess supply targeted at foreigners as buyers, and a lower-tier market driven by local developers targeting mostly local buyers
Most units in the gigantic projects remain unsold. There are important local implications if this is to continue. Beijing’s recent crackdown on capital outflows has raised questions as to whether Forest City, for example, will turn into a ‘ghost city’
Huge numbers of unsold units and of absentee owners will make the collection of maintenance fees a difficult problem which will seriously affect the upkeep of public amenities and private-owned facilities
Furthermore, the import of Chinese workers to carry out construction work eats into job opportunities for locals, including the skilled workforce. These foreign workers are also susceptible to being cheated by unscrupulous agent
https://penanginstitute.org/publications/issues/1003-chinese-property-projects-in-southern-johor-should-we-be-concerned/
NZ is following London’s folly with foreign ‘gold bricks’ investments driving up prices of luxury development but nobody lives there. In NZ you just need to buy a degree and everybody in your family can come to NZ too and be a NZ resident. It’s such a safe place to park the satellite family.
“I wrote yesterday how the new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, had spoken-out about foreign investors using homes in London as “gold bricks for investment” following an investigation which found that the UK’s tallest residential skyscraper is now more than 60% foreign-owned and is under-occupied.”
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/05/more-backlash-from-londons-empty-towers/
That was London 2016, Brexit followed – allowing unfair luxury development and speculation is not good for anyone.
Other countries have a foreign buyer stamp duty, but NZ likes to ensure that slave wage locals have to pay the same taxes as those who come into NZ with billions of dollars and no income, as we don’t like to discriminate against foreign money (sarcasm) – it’s so much easier to put taxes up to the local middle class doctors and teachers, and make ratepayers pay for water while giving it away to foreign business, as we are so ‘business friendly’ here.
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