After pouring billions into the pockets of property speculators in an intellectually obscene version of trickle down, Labour are apparently surprised our house prices have exploded.
The truth (like everything else in fucking NZ), is that the under regulated free market has been warped by the wealthy for their interests and all Labour attempt is bullshit tinkering on the sides rather than challenge the dominance of neoliberal theology.
We have allowed the commodification of houses to be a means to make wealth and people are chasing that with all the nuance of meth addicts in a P lab.
If Labour wanted actual solutions, these 3 would do it.
1 – FLOOD MARKET WITH MASS STATE HOUSING REBUILD: End the scum landlord subsidy of housing allowances end putting money into the pockets of unscrupulous motel owners by rapidly building 50 000 new state homes. Scum Landlords can do as they please because the level of desperation amongst renters gives them total power. Flooding the market with 50 000 new state houses would rob scum landlords of that desperation.
2 – STATE HOUSE FOR LIFE: Allow beneficiaries to stay in their state home for life so that they can create stable communities and that their desperation is never transported back to Landlords.
3 – DEPOSIT RESTRICTIONS: I have no issue with people who own their own home, or have a batch or even a 3rd property to provide income into your retirement. What I have no time for is people who own 4 properties, 5 properties, 10 properties, 20 properties, 80 properties.
Fuck them.
First time home buys should be required to have 10% deposit, but the more properties you own, the higher the deposit. The reason the speculators can out buy any first time home owner is because they can use their multiple properties to leverage more debt.
If you are a property speculator, you need to turn up with a 70% deposit to counter the leverage multiple properties allows them.
If Labour want to actually solve the problem they have to regulate the market and re-set it so that speculation is punished while first home ownership and housing of the poor is championed.
For too long we have allowed the the rich to dictate the rules, if Labour’s kindness is to be meaningful, it needs to challenge that dynamic.
Unfortunately Labour are not looking for solutions, they are looking for the pretence of a solution to ease criticism from their Left.
Luckily for Jacinda, house prices could jump 50% and as long as Labour keep the Covid virus out of the country, no one will care about housing unaffordability .
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Not really that hard is it. But unfortunately it wont happen as the Blairite is all talk and no bounce.
30 + years of successive government neglect coupled with 3.6 years of neglect and counting.
As long as peoples fantasies for Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Wiggles are appeased, all is good in the Shire.
Sadly I agree. She just wants to be seen to care and be trying to fix matters, but NOT actually fix the issues.
Martyn’s idea of a 70% deposit is a simple and EASY solution. No new taxes gets Jacinda off the hook SHE PUT HERSELF ON PURPOSELY (it would seem).
But again SHE and the rest DO NOT WANT TO FIX the problem, they just want to be seen to be trying…….how VERY sad.
Labours given themselves an open checkbook so they can infact fund a housing rebuild, cut the accommodation side of the WINZ budget and compensate middle income NZ with a tax cut. Then Labour would have a wonderful tax reform package.
I kind of disagree that Covid will save Labour because the obscenity that is our housing market is worsening just about every other indicator out there. Labour’s reputation for non delivery is solidifying every day and one more big failure will seal their collective fate.
And Jacinda, whom I think barely knows there is a housing problem or why or worse, the nasty worsening side effects it brings, is in no mind to do ANYTHING about it. It was quite embarrassing the other night to watch her in the media fumbling and ad -libbing about housing, talking of “pulling levers” and “leaving no stone unturned”. She had no plan, no idea and no intention to do anything other than get this mess off the front page. She will leave quarry loads of stones just the way they are thank you very much. She gets less credible as the clocks ticks away.
Think of the cancelled promises:
Nuclear free moment. It just melted away
1800 extra police
100 thousand homes in 10 years. Make that a few thousand if that.
Light rail… to anywhere
Pedestrian crossing over Auckland harbour.
Transformational
And last but not least, child poverty.
I do agree our economy has been set up by the wealthy for the wealthy. I read that Perth WA has just closed down a tent city of homeless in one of their parks, packed them off to hotels for a month, then nowhere. Its a script that runs deep throughout the western world.
Led by the salesman in chief Ardern, Labours key purpose is to ensure the status quo remains just as it is. The trouble is, trying to sweep the growing carnage under the rug by only addressing the worst of the symptoms to disguise this status quo is steadily getting more difficult as each week passes.
Load of rubbish
Louis. In your unabashed praise of Jacinda, where exactly is the plan? Where is the urgency? Trotting out the state house building programme redux, that is what National were doing albeit on a lesser scale is barely an answer. Blaming National, especially 3 years into her government does not build anything.
Prior to Christmas Jacinda stated she wants to see house prices keep rising. She clearly thinks the obscene prices that exist and have already existed are fine by her. By her words she identifed just how little she realises how problematic our existing house prices are and the root cause of the issue.
She had ruled out taxation to deviate investors, a very big stone left unturned.
Its all very well saying there is a crisis, fantastic, but pointless acknowledgement does not house people. She is big on talk, missing in action on walk. How was that light rail ride to Mt Roskill this morning?
Our housing system is broken. Labour knew that nearly a decade ago and came up with Kiwibuild but upon its failure there has been no plan and no alternative, just repeat talk of state houses.
There is no appetite by her government to take on more debt to build houses so they are reliant to the private sector to fix this and a bit of state housing. The thing is the way this housing market is going there will never be enough state houses. And using this failed model, nothing is going to improve.
Talking, tinkering and deferral is not a plan. Smoke and mirrors does not build homes.
Not surprised you dont have a clue, maybe you should stop listening to your own voice and get more informed, Kiwibuild which is NOT a homelessness policy, is not subsidized, it pays for itself and is only one part of the government’s massive building program, there’s also state and transitional builds as well.
You have taken what the PM said out of context, she was addressing Greens idea of a 25% house drop, which would crash the economy and people’s expectations. The PM has stated such house prices that we see right now, that were predicted to fall due to the pandemic but did the opposite, not surprising when you factor in that close to 100, 000 Kiwis have returned home so far, is not sustainable and lets not forget that her government banned non resident foreign buyers when they first came to office. To reiterate, unlike National, Jacinda acknowledges and talks about the housing crisis she inherited. Her govt have embarked on the biggest housing build since the 1970s. They have built thousands of homes so far with thousands more under construction, that’s not tinkering. Its pretty ridiculously unrealistic to expect a housing crisis that took years in the making to be solved overnight let alone in 3 years. Jacinda and her govt are also addressing the massive shortage of tradies after the previous National govt slashed apprenticeships.
Currently apprenticeship recruitment is at an all time high with a large influx of women now making up the numbers but still more is needed and they don’t become skilled tradies over night
My solutions.
1) Don’t tinker with the RMA. Too late for tinkering. It needs to be repealed and land freed up to build desperately needed homes on etc.
2) Impose punitive taxes on property investors who are land banking. It’s morally corrupt to allow land banking that services greed when there’s an unprecedented housing crisis in NZ.
3) Same situation with property investors who make a business decision to keep their investment property vacant rather than let it out.
4) Put a stop to offshore property investors using NZ based trusts to get around the ban on offshore buyers.
5) Some type of capital gains tax desperately needs to be imposed on property investors. The playing field is so heavily slanted in their favour that they can push their tenants out of the way at house auctions etc and pay 300k more than the vendor was expecting. This highlights what an obscene situation we now have. I appreciate Ardern made a commitment not to impose a CGT as long as she’s the PM but that was more about negating the very real threat made by Winston Peters than anything else and was the prudent and appropriate thing to do at that time. The game has dramatically changed and as a result, that commitment should be revisited with some urgency.
Yes, I’m a fan / supporter of Ardern but that support is not unconditional. I appreciate she is walking a tightrope and must avoid pulling levers that cause house prices to fall but that must not prevent her from sincerely doing what must be done.
The problem of building more houses is that you also need to build all that infrastructure like roads and public transport and waste water too ….. it’s not just building more houses.
The main problem is that the neoliberals in NZ have imported in a NZ population that was not expected until 2030 now so we also need more schools, hospitals, jails, justice systems, rehab, mental health as well as more social welfare money immediately. Zero planning under neoliberalism just stupidity.
NZ’s new residents need much of the above infrastructure in place immediately and within a few years of gaining permanent residency here like DBP and pensions… so we also need to plan for the welfare needs of all the new people as well as think a bit more about the issues of letting so many temp residents into NZ that are high needs people or criminals that never leave…. Our laws seem to encourage the worst types of people to come here and suck up resources away from locals who are getting less and less support.
Absolutely.
Onto it.
Dear Jacindafan
You may have change your moniker. I suggest sooner than later. Take today…first potentially dangerous community case of CV. Where was Jacinda?
I think her approach to the job is cynical, borderline arrogant actually. She ain’t no ‘prime minister’ in the pure sense.
Dear Jacindafan
You may have change your moniker. I suggest sooner than later. Take today…first potentially dangerous community case of CV. Where was Jacinda?
I think her approach to the job is cynical, borderline arrogant actually. She ain’t no ‘prime minister’ in the pure sense.
The myth that there is plenty of room in NZ is promulgated by those with little understanding of the necessity for wildness, wetlands, forest and large tracts of land not modified by human folly.
We have introduces pasts which are very damaging to the environment but the biggest pest is the human species.
The RMA is an attempt to regulate human activity, mainly for human occupation long term but incidentally a small control of further environmental travesty.
To think just in terms of more housing may suit developers and bankers but at a very high subsidy of environmental costs.
The problem needs to be viewed from a perspective of what has caused the apparent problem, rather than how we can continue and add to the problem.
The RMA needs strengthening not diluted.
The memes freely distributed by various agencies get taken up by Kiwi suckers who become bearers of “solutions” which are bad news.
The bigger picture has to be the viewpoint of worth and least negative consequence long term.
+1 John W – the attitude in NZ, is to cut everything ancient down (just replant another is the attitude to ancient trees and woods) or leave it to die from biosecurity breaches….. – London is made of 40% public green space, including 3,000 parks and totaling 35,000 acres for example (but declining as the Thatcherites sell off to developers).
In NZ the neoliberals seem to want to sell/give away public land to developers for private profits aka state house land and council owned land. Green spaces play a significant role in the environment whereby they filter pollutants, dust, and other harmful particles from the air. They also provide shade which lowers temperatures and waterways become better due to reduced soil erosion.
Have to disagree with state housing for life. Once a couple – or a single – reaches retirement age and their children/grandchildren have left home, they should be expected to move into downsized units. State units, ok, but the family can sort out their own housing arrangements, whether state if they qualify or private.
Have to disagree with state housing for life. Once a couple – or a single – reaches retirement age and their children/grandchildren have left home, they should be expected to move into downsized units. State units, ok, but the family can sort out their own housing arrangements, whether state if they qualify, or private. A single person or a couple should not expect to occupy a fullsized house forever.
The idea of the state building 50000 homes is a great goal but I am afraid it will be another pipe dream like the 100000 kiwibuild aim.
If the tenant wanted to stay for life then there should be a period say 10 years when the rent was @25% of income then it should be market rent so that there is a flow of money to build more homes.
The 70% deposit is fair as it would make property speculation less attractive and that money could go in shares in businesses that creates jobs.
At least it is a plan which is more than the Labour government seem to have at the moment but perhaps they are all enjoying their summer holidays to spend time fixing problems .
A cgt of say 80% on houses other than family homes would quickly correct the housing market downwards. The revenue collected could be used to help first home buyers and to eliminate child poverty. We need a real economy not a speculator’s paradise.
Agreed, but who can we vote for that will HONESTLY do that. Labour is SADLY the least rancid bad apple in the NZ political barrel.
Actually Martyn, your #2 solution is part of the bloody problem!
A family of say 3 or 4 kids get a 3 or 4 bedroom state house and then fast forward 20-25yrs…kids left all grown up and parents, or parent, now living in that house alone and thus taking a home out of commission for a family that want the same opportunity as that family were given.
The family upon, moving into the state house, should sign a legally enforceable agreement that when the youngest child reaches 21 the house will be given to another deserving family and the parents get down graded to a 2 bedroom state house.
Lets face it, the system is already basically a home for life but it needs legalality to be enforced to move them into another home.
Yes yes yes.
Except that never happened. Turned out the grandparents are taking care of the grandchildren
Too bad. Separate problem.
Added to that Sam we have many households with more than one families and the number of people increases as families expand.
Instead of the insular “nuclear family” we do need to think more of extended families and State housing being multi-generational for some families.
Where does an young person who is estranged from their family live as a chance of getting education or employment realistically very much depends on having a home.
Community stability and cohesion is also lost in the present landlord driven occupation.
The idea that people on the bottom of the economic ladder need to pull up their socks and buy a house is ridiculous.
john key and his band of neoiliberal banker based club, knew full well that increasing immigration, support of immigrant workers as an open policy plus the allowing of foreign house and land ownership; would have a diabolical effect of changing the structure of businesses and making housing a commodity to be gambled with by the various syndicates and wealthy without any moral of regulatory control.
The banks have done well as have investors at the expense of the public.
Owen Glen’s wealth has increased by a billion during covid19. He is just one and many of those who have used housing as a commercial investment live outside of NZ.
Meanwhile the increase in consumer numbers plays into the hands of Business NZ which is a part of the club.
The change needed is a systemic one.
NZ is a part of a global playground for wealth accumulation be a few who have been a part of a global re-engineering of the financial and political system towards their greedy ends.
The closet simple explanation is covered in this report.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56202.htm
Agreed John. Fully
“….but it needs legalality to be enforced to move them [the empty nesters] into another home”.
What home? Surely during the tenanacy some kind of buy-back scheme is desirable. Building affordabale state housing is only part of the solution. The other part is facilitating home ownership. That used to be the goal, didn’t it?
Oh pfft. It must really suck to be a mortgage broker knowing that everything TDB forecasted will happen to the property market has come true, whilst watching property developers move to zero and move to TDB. GOOD! You Monkeys deserve everything that’s coming to you.
Bang on. Unfortunately it’s not the rich dictating the rules. It’s ordinary middle class kiwis who own their own home and have the promise/illusion that this will always go up in value. As long as 50-60% of NZers own their own homes it just seems we aren’t going to see much by way of regulation to the housing market other than tinkering from both labour and/or the nats. The idea to build 50k houses/apartments is a good one…..but will take time, more time than our not so useful three year election cycle will enable I fear.
It doesn’t need to take ‘time’. Pay the Chinese or Vietnamese to come in for two-three years, with their own builders if needs be, and then go home afterwards and they’ll solve the problem quickly. Allow them to import their quality prefab homes (not their really cheap lower quality homes).
But (it would seem), NZ politicians of all colours, DO NOY want to fix this problem. They just want to talk and look busy trying to solve it.
Pay the Government on results and watch matters change. But here’s no chance of that good idea being used.
There are NZ building companies who can do up spec houses. Keep the Chinese /Vietnamese and whoever else right out of it thanks. And link it with NZ trade training and apprenticeship programmes. And keep the land bankers and big finance companies right out of it as well. The neo liberal model is what’s killing us. Agree about the politicians. State housing was the defining policy of the first, real labour government. This one will never do it.
You get the houses, then what about the infrastructure needed (roads, public transport, waste water, sewerage) and social needs (hospitals, schools, justice, police, jails, pensions, social welfare, wage subsidies, quarantine costs, medical costs) for our voluntary increase in population which is one of the highest per capita in the world already.
If government bothered to have one migrant leaving (aka the growing criminals operating both petty and serious in NZ with dual residency) before bringing in another migrant that might be better for society here, and would at least be a start!
Bums on seats for residency where criminals and paupers unable to survive here without ongoing welfare for housing and wages top ups as their skills are gig economy skills are part of NZ’s problem. There should be no migrant relatives coming to NZ unless they fully pay for schools, medical care, ACC BEFORE the visa is issued, and can never access NZ social welfare like DPB, pensions etc piggybacking on others, would help stem the welfare competition for NZ’s working poor, pensioners and beneficiaries. If a migrant falls pregnant in NZ they have to leave and have their child in their own country. Might stop Kiwi woman giving birth in the car parks and our terrible maternity system that is a joke now with less and less care available as it is so over run with use.
If migrants come to NZ, but can’t make it work, then they should go home, straight away and if they want to complain and appeal immigration, it should be only available in their own countries to appeal.
Better still just have the old UK working holiday visa, where people can come to your county work crap jobs for 1 year and travel for the rest. But they must go after 2 years. Make insurance for ACC and health care mandatory before anyone who is not a citizen is coming into NZ.
The English/Euopeans have a social welfare and pension system to go back to in their own countries so would voluntarily leave when it didn’t work out here, but people from countries without social welfare in their own countries don’t leave and use fake methods to stay here. A pension alone is worth 1 million dollars to the family, worth paying for scams to stay here.
Immigration needs to stop being a poorly performing woke business here selling citizenship and permanent residency visa to high needs people, and start to actually encourage decent ‘visitors’ who leave.
Basic requirements are not being met, corruption and woke stupidity, is part of the problem for immigration here.
“….and then go home afterwards…”
You’re joking aren’t you Kevin. Few who set foot here will want to return. But you may have a point. It’s getting pretty tough to find builders now, so essential workers? In any case Covid is likely to be around for a while yet.
Kevin.
Nah for many reasons.
The biggest of which is not addressed by housing.
Do 50% – 60% percent of Kiwi’s own their own home? Or do 50% – 60% of Kiwis live in an owner occupier household. **Myth busted*:
***drops mic***
Hmm…yeah…..I agree
‘Unfortunately Labour are not looking for solutions, they are looking for the pretence of a solution to ease criticism from their Left.’
Yep.
The same with Planetary Meltdown, Wobbly Finance [that is on the way to implosion], under-funded hospitals, underfunded schools….pretty much anything you can name except the salaries and benefits of bureaucrats and politicians, which just go up and up as the level of performance goes down and down.
Perhaps I am being too critical: we are being treated to some nice cycleways that cost $1 million per kilometre, maybe more. It’s such a shame so many are being built right next to major highways, forcing cyclists to breathe highly contaminated air.
At least we can take comfort in the knowledge that the Great Reset is not far off now.
The “Great Reset” is being planned at Davos and really is consistent to the many other somewhat weet sounding promises that just lead to greater wealth collection bu the few.
So using another term will avoid confusion.
Collapse of the existing system of wealth collection by the few will involve increase in poverty among the many, just as it has done before.
Acknowledging that climate shift and over population coupled with consumerism, stealing of resources through continuous war and that the planet is finite, is just too much for most Kiwis to carry in their heads.
Kiwis living in communities who supply structures are heavily dependent of fossil fueled transport, just cannot move their understanding from struggling with daily life and for the better off a new car and a few drinks at the local pub.
Forget the electric car fiasco as a solution as it is resource hungry and the harvested energy is run the e-cars is just not possible in NZ.
Getting rid of the mindset that heated towel rails. daily hot water showers, driving to the supermarket for supplies, living in multi room houses with many mod cons such as washing machines, driers, dishwashers, toasters, microwaves, stereos, fridges, deep freezers, air conditioning of even room heaters: all accumulate the harvested energy consumption of your household.
A fit cyclist is able to output work approximate rate of 100 watts over a short period of effort.
Two slices of toast in a toaster draws energy at approximately 800 to 1000 watts for say conservatively 3 minutes after initial heating to the toasting operation. Taking that into account the energy consumed for those 2 slices of bread (already cooked with even more energy consumed ) to be “toasted” amounts to approximately 100 watt hours which is equivalent to a fit cyclist pedaling hard for an hour. Just for a bit of toast.
If an hours hard work was involved then toast would be a forgotten luxury that the would then not be a completely unnecessary drain on the environment
.
The complexity of links between harvested energy consumption and the diminishing planetary resources is often too complex for Kiwis to appreciate.
But in simple terms the planet is finite.
Billions of years of changes in the crust have produced a planet with a biosphere conducive to life evolving; The Non Renewable Natural Resources that have eventuated through natural changes in the crust and biosphere are now being consumed at an increasing rate by the virus called humanity.
Recognise it.
We have consumed the Non Renewable Natural Resources at an acceleration rate up to the present point in that process where the resources have been plundered to the extent that over two thirds to three quarters are now gone, consumed, no longer available, finished, most not to return in millions of years.
What NRNR are left are progressively harder to harvest and consume. Already the industrialisation developed to consume these NRNR is faltering and activity in that sector is, and will continue to decline an increasingly rapid rate.
This is not made up ramblings but based on solid research just not commented on in the MSM cornucopia.
Our lifestyle in NZ today is embedded in a system that proliferates increasing energy consumption.
Yeah, Yeah , yeah.
Stepping back a generation or so. My mum did family washing on Saturday weather permitting. Hot water was used when the “copper” was lite using local wood scraps to fire the heating. Sheets were boiled to make them white and home made soap was added to the water. Most washing was done by hand using home made soap or the trusted Sunlight brand soap containing no detergents. A scrubbing board was used as a mod con of those times. Washing was hung out on a line for the sun and wind to dry. Ironing of some items was done with “irons” being a shaped slab of iron with a handle left to heat up on the family wood range used for cooking and heating bath water. We shared our bath water having the luxury of that hot water. Our family had a bath once a week while others in the neighbourhood with larger families bathing was shared out over a fortnight.
Most families in the street did not have a car and those few who did still did their shopping by walking or using public transport, Some used bicycles with a carrier for groceries.
No fridge as we used a “Safe” which allowed circulation of cool air around food placed in it. Meat cooked on Sunday could last well over a week in the safe during winter and half that time in summer. Now power used.
No TV but a simple mantel radio and a cheap evening and morning paper with weekly papers carrying the sleeze called the “Truth”. The paper was used for many purposes and end up being burned or used in garden compost.
When items were bought from a shop they were wrapped in brown paper and often tied with string , both items being collected and reused. Butchers used a “grease proof paper” to help prevent the blood escaping the brown paper parcel..
Eggs were carried in paper bags as where biscuits and most other groceries. Those bags were reused many times for school lunches which were sandwich based,
When we were cold we put on more clothes and in winter beds may have been made warmer with a hot water bottle for those who were not well.
There was no heating in the house apart for the wood range and a sitting room fireplace used when visitors came.
The luxury of electric lights was appreciated and low wattage bulbs used with lights being switch off when a room was exited.
Nappies were cleaned and washed by hand.
We were in a suburb with water reticulation but many relatives used tank water collected from the roof of buildings.
Consequently out harvested energy consumption was a small fraction of that consumed by most households today.
Today we squander the harvested energy supplied by processes plundering NRNR and just take it for granted being oblivious of the environmental destruction caused. We take bland justifications of our actions without looking at a bigger picture.
If we were to step back several generations then more basic provision for the necessities of life took much less NRNR but took more of peoples time and physical energy. Toast was enjoyed but made by a wood fire used for other purposes, for those who were able to make bread.
Water collection from the roof of dwellings was problematic with thatched roofs.so wooden shingles was a more complex construction but allowed collection of water into wooden barrels. Ice would form on the barrels in Winter in some areas of NZ.
Water, food and shelter were community priorities and houses were a shared resource.
Ships sailed and windmills ground grain or pumped water. Transport was powered by animal as was ploughing and many agricultural processes. Most food was not highly processed and plant based.
We have a model of how to live in a more environmentally inclusive manner but the system based on a ridiculous “growth” meme will continue to trap humans in a destructive suicidal quest.
War is just plain stupid as a means of reducing human numbers selectively while employing a massive consumption of NRNRs. Its just based on greed and selfishness blocking rational cooperation between groups of humans. is
So no change is in sight until the present life experience changes drastically and no support for food supply is available, because it has NOT been planned for..
Very wrong to espouse owning an extra home to provide income for retirement, because that is one less home for someone else to own and occupy. All property ought to be taxed on its deemed or imputed return, including capital gains above cpi inflation, to create equality between owners and renters.
Not everyone wants to own their own home as it does not suit their life style to be locked into owning a house . In Europe a large portion of the population rent but they rent a shell and make it theirs until they move on and leave it as a shell. This is similar to commercial property in NZ.
There is a need for private landlords as not everyone wants to be under the control of a civil servant (who often are anythink but civil ) .
Trevor over hundreds of years property has aggregated to be owned by a small “nobility” now displaced by corporations.
The cards are stacked.
The idea of owning your own home was always to provide a secure home and security in retirement, not investment income.
Yes, that’s right RosieLee. AO/NZ is quite different to Europe in regard to long-term tenancy/home ownership. I suspect all tied up with Old World history. As is our relationship to property linked to our colonial history.
Here in AO/NZ home ownership is possibly the ONLY way to provide security. Good times don’t last forever and sooner or later one looks to put down roots. In AO/NZ tenancy is just too random and too closely tied to short term investment/ investors. And here lies the problem, around for a while but growing day by day. Solutions? Well, its complex of course a good many have been well canvassed: build ‘affordable’ housing for those able to meet the criteria – easier said than done as ‘affordable’ now is off the planet – and thats a big problem by itself since many of those who would in the past been able to get in a first home now have little chance; so provide banking solutions with state intervention to make ownership possible; and state intervention to deter housing becoming simply an investment; also provide state incentives to move to where housing is more ‘affordable’ (if there are jobs of course to service the mortgage); again, provide state intervention to build social housing for those unable to meet mortgage criteria – with the option of a buy-back scheme if circumstances change.
Note the term ‘state intervention’. Free market ideology has f*cked us really. Too much competition and not enough cooperation. Is all catch up now. And frankly a bit of a mess. With politicians not brave enough to grasp the nettle.
But thanks for reminding us that housing is about security. And that’s the same for tenancy as it is for home ownership.
Our modern politic is a fascist capitalist democracy and when inspected closely you’ll see a whole biome of parasites and worms wriggling around within it. [Its] primary objective is to launder money born of our agrarian primary industry which, in turn, derives its (our) funds almost entirely from exporting.
That, is entirely why we have poverty and homelessness on a rich few islands.
Our politic must do a U turn and return to a socialist capitalist economy or things will continue to get worse for normal people while abnormal people, and those are people usually flush with cash=power and almost always the cash of others, and who will sell you and me out in a heart beat to the highest bidder.
Example: Peter thiel 12 days here and now an AO/NZ resident.
You can see the possum @ MB but you’re still barking up the wrong tree.
Labour has the teeth and hair while the natzo’s still have the money. Letting that sink in should give you all sleepless nights.
Here’s why…
“A body language expert analyzes Donald Trump’s powershake with Peter Thiel”
https://qz.com/863518/a-body-language-analysis-of-donald-trump-and-peter-thiels-strange-power-handshake-at-tech-summit-with-jeff-bezos-of-amazon-satya-nadella-of-microsoft-elon-musk-of-tesla-timothy-d-cook-of-apple/
Country Lad
You speak of things that cause worry. concern and for many a deep sense of injustice. I concur with you on that score with a few more concerns added.
Wealth arises out of collecting the outcomes of labour. Yes the physical stuff that does things in the concrete real world.
Those who collect wealth take it from the labours of the community they attach to.
It is not the result of their physical labour but as there grasping a role as a parasite. Some parasites can be beneficial but most parasites in our society just band together to prevent community based wealth to be shared by all more fairly.
Farmers are dictated to by banks and their need to meet payments. Many market gardeners make a comfortable living off a comparatively small piece of land and horticultural processes using some fossil fueled mechanisation. Generally their supply of vegetables which are essential to human health, are predominantly captured by Supermarket buyers giving as little are possible and bankrupting some gardeners who gear up for that supply.
Those who sell at the gate or travel with their wares to town centres are more independent and cheaper to buy from.
Dairy and sheep farming provide a much smaller quantity of goods to Kiwis but rely on exporting to support the prices they need to continue, often prices dictated by the once “cooperative” Fonterra which as a good corporate has gobbled up nearly all of the farmers small district cooperatives that the farmers had control over..
Plant food is a staple food with occasional animal produce not being a necessity but a heavily promoted fashion.
So looking at our resilience as a community the export and transportation aspects of agriculture are limitations at present gambled on. With fossil fuel pollution, fertiliser pollution to the soil, ground water, rivers, lakes and estuaries, plus the pollution from plastics, biocides and prossessing of animal product; the environmental subsidisation to the major part of our “agricultural” activity has a rapidly diminishing future.
The poor old farmer along with the wealthy corporate farmer will have to fight the inevitable as they are not politicall opposed to reduction of environmental protection, fertiliser elimination and unpolluted groundwater.
The corporates will just loose a little and move on while the small farmer will be ousted by the bankers.
Family farms of modest size may be able to diversify if the land allows that and they are not mortgaged with bankers accompanying “management”.
The farmers labour is what he is trying to market and export in a time of transport reduction being forced, makes export a potential dead end. Sailing ships still need refrigeration which at the moment is a bit hard to run on wind or sun for transportation purposes. So export of non perishables by way of sail may still be a possibility. Wool, tanned hides and dried products along with grain could be an export avenue beyond fossil fuel dependency.
How to change the system is where a measure of thinking has to go well beyond the majority of what is being discussed on this blog site.
Housing?
What has caused the problem in housing is what needs scrutinee and action to mitigate. Just building more will not address the problem a it appears to be seen.
Housing affordability is the lowest in the OCED. That is not an accident and a lot of shit is being spouted about what it is and what it means.
Bomber your solutions on housing would be a good starting point for a new Labour movement dedicated to addressing what the others will never commit to doing as they are compromised.
The only way to force change is giving many suffering people out there is a movement that will act no excuses.
MMP currently is FPP in drag with the lesser of the two evils now ruling with unrestrained authority for three years.
The Greens will never be that movement but could be an important environmental voice in a reconfigured political re alignment. It has to happen to force New Labour to come to their senses and end the brainwashing of market economics and wanting to stay in government.
I would say there is a long list of policies that are needed if we have the opportunity to act on them.
Just a thought.
Ban house ownership for new migrants (they should be eligible after 20 years like migrant superannuatants) to force them into rentals, whilst simultaneously giving housing priority to tangata whenua and those who have lived here their whole lives. Take the responsibility to house people out of the hands of these money grubbing real estate companies. Defund these ‘Maori’ and religious house providers; this isn’t a virtuous business venture, it’s a human right and an emergency. Initiate a capital gains tax on anything but the primary house (backdate arrears to the start of the housing crisis, say 20 years ago). Do something, anything. I heard commentators just this morning say that the indigenous New Zealanders need kick-starts and assistance to get into their first house, and if they just work hard enough what dreams will come. This is just the out of touch blathering that put this country into this mess and the lack of inertia and mindset that this government is becoming associated with. It’s over, low income earners will never own land and the best they can hope for from Jacinda is being a hungry slave renter in their own land.
Not sure why Russian Fishers, international students and visa holders who have not been in NZ for a year but apparently essential workers, and Pakastani cricket teams are stilling coming to NZ in the age of Covid and taking up housing.
Now a community spread in Northland post quarantine https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-officials-responding-to-probable-community-case-in-northland/UKXYNUTBHCIKG4DZ2W5NQVSW3A/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=nzh_fb&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3CS9ArjU6SflnEIyEhEsvpyV1VEd8o7k2w06fz96Faciije7u_nCnXJdA#Echobox=1611444941
Russian seamen are here to do the work we are to lazy to do. International students are here to help education keep afloat. They pay up to 7 times what a course will cost a local person. Often these visa holders are doing work that no NZ person can do because they do not have the experience or the will to work in isolated areas. Pakistani cricket teams generate money at the venue and TV rights in a World market deprived of any sport.. Few of these people will be taking up houses as the seaman and cricketers will stay in hotels which is good for the econony and visa holders would probably have been paying rent on a home while they waited to get back.
These are not the people to blame point your anger at those in charge who did not see the situation occurring then failed to correct the situation when it did .
Nope Russian Fishers are here because they don’t whistleblow when the fishing is illegally caught and over the fishing quota and bycatch and health and safety is compromised.
NZ’ers are not wanted because they speak out against illegal behaviour. NZ never had problems getting staff before neoliberalism.
As for the international students, they never leave and doing laughable courses. By the time they get their flaky NZ qualification, their spouse, kids and pensioner parents are bought into NZ. With the flakey masters and graduate visas, they can then demand residency for some crap job. In addition if working is not your lifestyle, go on the DPB, once you have kids born in NZ, everyone gets to stay.
Another reason not to leave NZ, is they are too mentally ill/suicide risk/criminal to leave.
In short many ways to refuse to leave and our laws allow it.
Other countries like the US and UK actually have decent prestigious educational courses that international students flock to do, they don’t get citizenship to attract them. In NZ our courses are low brow aimed at the foreign students NZ has developed a need to have residency bribes for their educational system pumping out ‘international business’ masters degrees for future NZ citizens as burger King ‘managers’ and importers. Meanwhile Kiwis are spiralling down on domestic tertiary numbers and their bodies are not even noticed missing in the university halls.
It’s false economy when a private business is getting the profits while the NZ taxes pay millions for all the problems involved in NZ organisations and businesses being run by short term focused neoliberals bringing in migrants which has gone horribly wrong as seen by the statistics in NZ for poverty and still the ‘skills shortages” (possibly because supermarket managers, chefs, aged care workers and labourers bought are not skilled jobs at all, but underpaid jobs that have become immigration scams).
Now our taxes support the above migrants through wage subsidies, quarantine subsidies and medical care, while not worrying about the billions of dollars of economic damage through Covid coming into NZ!
Another ‘quality’ sarcasm, bus driver with NZ permanent residency obtained by receipt, who hasn’t worked out very well…. after being deported from Australia he’s now on trial in CHCH for murdering 5 people in Fiji.
“Mohammed Raheesh Isoof, a Fijian citizen who holds permanent residency in New Zealand, was supposed to stand trial on Monday over the deaths of Nirmal Kumar, 63, his wife Usha Devi, 54, their daughter Nileshni Kala and her two children Sana, 11, and Samara, 8.”
“His first application for bail was denied because he was considered a flight risk as he was previously deported from Australia and moved to New Zealand under a new name – issues that haven’t been clarified to the court, Justice Morais said.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/124044279/fiji-deaths-trial-of-christchurch-man-accused-of-murdering-family-of-five-delayed
Gary Lin says no thank you!
One can see how a Parliament and a party system brings itself into contempt fostering extremism. As Marx showed we have a property owning bourgeoisie a middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes.
“the rise of the bourgeoisie at the end of the eighteenth century”
(in Marxist contexts) the capitalist class who own most of society’s wealth and means of production.
And the propertyless The proletariat are the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian.
We have a Neoliberal so called democratic government which refuses to address the speculator paradise in housing and the very serious issues of child poverty and homelessness.
What’s not to despise? Are not the bods in Parliament a waste of space? Meaning they’re grossly overpaid useless puppets!
Another lesser mentioned element of being part of the proles is that you were a designated “breeder”. Even if you were unemployed you could still “add to the machine”. Puts a nice spin on “good parenting”. This is why I don’t consider myself a part of the “Left” as the usual discussions have it. There’s too many discriminatory levels and pointless wasteful divisions. La vie est liberté. Vive la Lumpenproletariat!
They almost look like a facade of democracy put there so as a to con the proletarian/prol’s into believing there is some hope, if only a different party/MP ‘could just get into power’.
Opium for the masses I believe was a Marx’s remark.
“I have no issue with people who own … a batch or even a 3rd property to provide income into your retirement.”
I have a big problem with that idea, because it literally spells out the wider problem. I mean seriously, who thinks they have a right to 3/4 of three families income, plus increases in value to home and land, to live through retirement? Goddamn that makes me mad. But otherwise, the list is a not even scary place to start which makes it all the more depressing. My list would get me screamed at for being a communist or domestic terrrorist, but I would argue it’s to prep for covid in the community. The fact is that at current settings, once an accelerated covid variant gets here, even your list won’t be enough and there won’t be time to begin it. We can’t build 20,000 homes in a week, or a month. We’ll have to work with what we have: immediate rent caps, restrictions on property ownership, food production foccused domestically over export, income stability and open acessibilty to essential services. That’s the tame in end of the list. I’m pretty sure that no such thing will happen, and that’s how Labour have ended their electoral viability. If you inspect the legislation enacted to prep for covid it consists of tax tinkering, coralling people for health reasons (fair enough), and helping employers fend off unions and negotiations. The upside is that covid will sort this all out for us very soon, whether we like it or not.
1 and 3 are great ideas . 1 will take about five years but 3 can be done on the first sitting week of parliament. I’d also add getting rid of student loans and having loan amnesty , or something basically where you if you are saving for a home your loan can be paused. if you want young people in housing a huge cost like student loans makes it almost impossible to get a deposit.
As for 2. I grew up in a state house and went to one of the poorest high schools in NZ and I have to say absolutey no to a state house for life, the ammount of horror stories my friends and family witnessed of living next door to violent and druggie psychos, it’s next to impossible to get housing nz to evict gang members and menacing Tennant’s who ruin other state house and private house neighbours, no matter what the rules are they do nothing.
However. Rule abiding tenants who have been long term in a house shouldn’t be kicked out as soon as their kids hit 18. And if we start building mass state houses and we keep up the levels indefinitely I wouldn’t be against a rent to own situation for long term residents at a higher rent as long as for every house we sold we built 5 more in it’s place
Yes agree 100% rent to own is the long term way to go which from memory is Green party policy.
I know socialists love the idea of stopping people owning things. However, making it hard for people to own or build homes will have only one effect, which is that it will reduce the number of houses and units that are built. So rather than helping fixing the problems of housing, it will actually making them worse.
Forget about how many houses people own, it is an irrelevant distraction, in fact it is worse than that, it is actually bad policy.
The only things the govt should focus on is building social housing and helping first home buyers. The first is covered (50,000 new social houses) but the item completely ignores the second issue. The govt has to deal with that, since this actually affects more people than the social housing issue. Most probably there needs to be some sort of enhanced first home owner grant, maybe linked to family size. A bit like Family Benefit capitalisation of the old days. It could be a suspensory loan of some sort.
Item 2 of lifetime tenancy is a bad idea. It is currently the cause of many of the problems with older people occupying large homes, when there are many younger families with more pressing needs. Much better for the older person to shift into a smaller home.
“I know socialists love the idea of stopping people owning things.”
Horseshit argument, lazy, and juvenile. Then you go on to gaslight old people, no wonder we can’t get anything done with idiots like you around. Maybe you might want to join national and become a mp I hear they have spaces.
Here a hint, channel your inner Davish Krail and we will get solutions.
The solution is more houses,
the solution is to build them,
the wrong answer is to go off half cocked like a broken ideological record, which Wayne, you are a good example of that batshit approach we been stuck with for the last 40 odd years.
The housing market,(especially Auckland), is approximately 60% overvalued.
Just like the stock market on a long term ‘bull run’ that eventually collapses like a pack of cards, the commodification of the New Zealand housing market means it too will correct severely. What goes up beyond normal inflation must come down. It’s the law of averages. There is the odd exception but the N.Z housing market will not be one of them.
Artificially propped up by rampant immigration, overseas speculators who have never even set foot in the country, and the banks who keep on lowering interest rates every time they get a sniff of the market buttoning off and readying for a fall and the ‘free market’ is anything but.
The result of their short term gain and thinking, is the setting in stone of inter generational poverty and hardship, not only for the less fortunate, but now, even for the children from middle class backgrounds whose parents can’t afford to give them a $250,000 deposit as a helping hand. Even then, those ‘fortunate’ children will have to service a $750,000 mortgage.
We have talk about the RMA, cost of materials, cost of land, cost of tradespeople, cost of councils but nothing about real estate agents clipping the ticket for ridiculous percentages on every transaction for doing 5/8 ths of sweet F***All . Where’s the restructuring of that shark pool ?
What a disgraceful shambles.
The market will have to crash, and will crash, and it won’t matter, because people should be buying houses to live in and not speculate off.
If the value drops below what they paid for it, so be it. They will obviously be able to keep servicing their mortgage otherwise they wouldn’t have committed to it in the first place.
The banks have well and truly painted themselves into a corner. Mortgages in the 2%’s. What’s their next plan? Answer. They don’t have one!
They will have to get used to loaning money on an asset whose capital could end up being worth substantially less than the initial loan. They might have to take a more measured 50 year approach to investment and ditch the bonus fueled reef fish mentality of the quarterly report .
You are so right. The apartment market in Sydney and Melbourne has dropped in value by 35% over a 3 year period due mainly to too many being built. Unfortunately for many that will not happen here as there are fewer houses than we need and apartment living still does not seem popular.
Rent-to-own schemes, different modalities for different target groups, covering a time-frame of up to two generations, would allow to address the problem according to changing demographic or socioeconomic developments.
Martyn
I lean right. I resent having someone as weak as Jacinda as our PM. However…however…I appreciate she won the election fair and square.
The thing I despise most about her (more than her constant sickening spin) is her inaction. Jacinda was given a huge ginormous massive mandate, also thanks to many right voters switching to Labour this time – so that she could act freely and get shot done.
And what does she do with that massive mandate? FUCK ALL!!!!
All your suggestions are good, easy to employ. eg. I have no problem with cranking up deposits for investment properties – hey, if you really believe it will make good money, pay 100% cash then!
Still, the housing problem is not just caused by investors. It’s caused by successive lame governments, made much worse by the fact that this Labour govt, in its 2nd term with a massive mandate, will not seize the day and…BE DECISIVE!!! RMA – be decisive! Obstructive Councils – be decisive! Building code – be decisive! Whatever is required – be decisive!
But then, as we all know, Jacinda and this govt are simply not qualified to tackle the problem.
And that is the sad truth.
Interesting that your number 1 suggestion is an indirect acknowledgment that we’re facing a supply driven issue. The current administration could solve the crisis by doing exactly as you suggest but the consequence would be a collapse in existing house prices so that’ll never happen.
Auckland is surrounded by land suitable for building the government just needs to have the guts to put the infrastructure in and build thousands of houses like they did in Mt Roskill, Naenae and Linwood all those years ago.
It’ll never happen though. All politicians are just too scared of the median voter.
A NZ pension is worth 1 million dollars of tax free money and you don’t have to contribute. Funny enough th woke don’t seem worried about this social harm and benefit. And the migrants are not here to help NZ, but to get free money like pensions, health care and schooling. By the time that is all paid for, nothing left for Kiwi poor.
The reason that the right wingers want the migrants to get pensions is so NZ has to move to private pensions and health care as we run out of money.
Migrant community fight ‘inhumane’ plan to move NZ Super goalposts
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/123914117/migrant-community-fight-inhumane-plan-to-move-nz-super-goalposts
No health care and pensions in their countries but NZ is such a soft touch!
Our government is so generous to help billions of middle class people in economies far stronger than NZ, with free access to the NZ health system for hundreds of thousands of new people with allowance for ongoing satellite family growth operating here…
Public Health care in India is poor quality and most people don’t use it…
“The Indian public health sector encompasses 18% of total outpatient care and 44% of total inpatient care.[10] Middle and upper class individuals living in India tend to use public healthcare less than those with a lower standard of living.[11] Additionally, women and the elderly are more likely to use public services.[11] The public health care system was originally developed in order to provide a means to healthcare access regardless of socioeconomic status or caste.[12] However, reliance on public and private healthcare sectors varies significantly between states. Several reasons are cited for relying on the private rather than public sector; the main reason at the national level is poor quality of care in the public sector, with more than 57% of households pointing to this as the reason for a preference for private health care.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India
Public Health care in China is not free for urban nationals…
“Residents of urban areas are not provided with free healthcare, and must either pay for treatment or purchase health insurance. The quality of hospitals varies. ”
“Despite this, public health insurance generally only covers about half of medical costs, with the proportion lower for serious or chronic illnesses. Under the “Healthy China 2020″ initiative, China is currently undertaking an effort to cut healthcare costs, and the government requires that insurance will cover 70% of costs by the end of 2018”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_China
Chinese pensions…
Guess what, in China you have to CONTRIBUTE minimum 15 years to get a pension and only get 1% of the indexed wage in China for your public pension.
http://www.oecd.org/els/public-pensions/PAG2017-country-profile-China.pdf
In India it sounds like no free public pension and minimum 10 Years of CONTRIBUTIONS of 12% and only 12% of the work force seemed covered for pensions anyway.
http://www.oecd.org/els/public-pensions/PAG2017-country-profile-India.pdf
In NZ you don’t have to contribute at all to a pension as an overseas person or be working, just be resident here for 10 years (used to be 5 years) to get 43 per cent of the NZ average wage and it is not means tested for overseas pensioners either.
“To meet the residency requirements for New Zealand Superannuation, Veteran’s Pension (New Zealand pensions) and most New Zealand benefits, generally, you must:
be lawfully resident, and
be present, and
be ordinarily resident in New Zealand, and
have spent some time living in New Zealand (a period of residence).”
https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/pensions/travelling-or-moving/moving-to-nz/residency-requirements-for-new-zealand-benefits-and-pensions.html
Not surprising that NZ is now the place to retire to and be supported as an overseas resident as well as the free quality health care that many have to pay for in their own countries!
NZ needs to wake up, times have changed, instead of encouraging quality people to come to NZ we are just giving middle class foreign pensioners a fortune (and encouraging more to come for the freebies) while not spending taxes on our massive poverty for Kiwi’s who live in cars and pay a fortune for basic items like sunblock and Kiwifruit here in our rip-off big business culture, which also seems to support bringing in more cheap migrants to work and consume overpriced goods here.
Thank you, for the info. This is another sleeping train wreck that is just beginning . .
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