Just how far Labour have deserted low-income tenants and families in this budget is best illustrated in housing.
When Labour came to office in 2017 there were 5,000 on the state house waiting list. This had ballooned to 25,500 by the end of last year and has been accurately described as a housing “catastrophe” by the Salvation Army.
So what does budget 2022 deliver. Here’s the RNZ budget summary for housing:
Housing
- $221m for Affordable Housing Fund
- $1b to support public and transitional housing
- $355m for redesigning emergency housing system
- $75m for Homelessness Action Plan
The $221m for Affordable Housing Fund is to get the children of the middle class into their first home. The other three amounts are for state housing and social housing providers and if taken together ($1.43b) would build just 5,000 homes – in practice a hell of a lot less.
How does that address the 25,500 – and growing – state house waiting list? It doesn’t and Labour is happy to keep it this way.
In essence, by keep down the number of state houses the government is bolstering the incomes of middle-class New Zealanders who have rental properties. Keeping the housing supply tight for low-income families forces these families to stay in private sector rentals and pay impossible rents. The government then subsidises these impossibly high rents through the accommodation supplement rather than build state houses themselves.
For those on low-incomes this is a landlord’s budget.
So that’s a re-annoucement of Megan Woods announcement on 28 April this year.
It was a like for like state house replacement x 4000, 2000 additional state houses plus 10000 affordable homes, all built over 5-16 years. 5-16 years may as well be a 1000 years because National will scrap it anyway. Trouble is the catastrophe is now, right now, like 2022! What can it possibly look like in 5-16 years, I’d hate to think!
Most definite takeout is this preserves the housing status quo nicely but looks like they’re doing something now. What’s that term? Smoke and mirrors?
So this govt building more state houses since the 1970’s, as supposedly officially recorded, is not correct then…..
Please excuse my ignorance, but isn’t “$1b to support public and transitional housing” about what they are paying each year anyway? (That would the variation between IRR and market price for social housing, + what they pay in AS subsidies for those not in social housing).
Labour must be in some sort of scumlord sect. Once again shoveling more cash to their rich mates. Dogs.
Capitalism needs all the help it can get and so the government puts in place all the subsidies it needs to in order to keep capitalism going.
That’s what the government not building state housing is all about – subsidising the leeches.
Capitalism requires Booms and Busts.
The BUSTS clear bad debts, companies and speculators from the system. Unfortunately since the 1970’s it’s been a case of papering over the cracks.
The NZ housing market has been akin to a game of Monopoly where the bank is a money printer only those with houses have access to.
“Sometimes, the issue isn’t with a player running out of cash, but that the bank has run out of banknotes. Imagine that you pass Go and want to claim your $200, but there just isn’t that much left in the bank. This scenario is quite rare, but it can happen.
According to the official Monopoly rules, if the bank runs out of cash, you are permitted to make more banknotes and add them to the bank. You can do this on scraps of paper, or if you have a printer handy, it’s easy to print out some ready-made Monopoly money templates.”
lol
Landlords=120,000 votes.
Labour should have figured out,they don’t get them…regardless.
The government needs to buy 25,000 homes – to house those on the waiting list.
The homes they are building are barely enough to keep up with those over 60 and paying rent – who will need to have a state house when they stop working.
I would say that, because of the coronavirus pandemic which has directly affected this country since March 2020 and is still ongoing; the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010/2011 which took more than half a decade to repair; and inflationary pressures, this year’s budget cannot be anything except for a landlord’s budget. All up, between those two disasters plus the financial collapse in late 2007, plus the Uridashi bonds which affected us earlier in that decade, there’s probably around a shortfall of $8billion which could have built around 20,000 state homes.
In addition to these facts, landlords actually have tougher regulations to adhere to than they used to which accounts for home heating, insulation, etc. Labour are happy to push legislation through parliament for more requirements if they perceive a widespread need in this country.
Moreover, there is a trend for people to be less reliant on State housing and more reliant on their KiwiSaver. And if you want to be precise about it, a significant proportion of KiwiSaver funds are invested in either residential or commercial Kiwi properties, so effectively renters are already the landlords.
I don’t see much of a future in state housing. What I do see a future in is of future governments increasing the incentives applicable to KiwiSaver so they eventually this country will have less tenants and more home owners.
Yeah Na.
25,000 onto the waiting list in recent years – the growing numbers over 55 not owning and only able to pay market rent while working. They cannot use their Kiwi Saver as a deposit – unless they work to 80 to pay off the mortgage.
At that age unless you have an 80% deposit the banks laugh at you even tho the mortgage repayment is less than half of the exorbitant rents we pay. It is t by e Banks in a conspiracy to keep the poor out of the housing market. its legal discrimination.
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