The Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt is the keynote speaker at a public meeting in Christchurch on Monday to discuss “Housing as a human right” (see poster below)
The meeting is organised by the State Housing Action Network and takes place on Monday 12 December, 7pm at the Transitional Cathedral on the corner of Hereford and Madras Streets.
The meeting will be chaired by Jill Hawkey, Executive Director of Christchurch Methodist Mission, who has an intimate knowledge of the crippling housing issues facing people on low incomes in Christchurch and around the country.
State Housing Action Network will also speak at the meeting promoting our solution to the housing catastrophe.
“Our solution to the housing catastrophe facing low and middle-income tenants and families is simple” says SHAN Convenor John Minto. “We want an industrial-scale state house building programme”
“Only the government has the capacity and the resources to address this housing catastrophe – we have done it in the past and we can do it again”
“Unfortunately the Labour government has been moving in the opposite direction – selling hundreds of millions in state house land and building piddling numbers of state houses for the huge waiting list”
“Only the government has the capacity and the resources to address this housing catastrophe – we have done it in the past and we can do it again”
Let’s analyze this is a more depth.
Firstly, are Jacinda & friends going to put on a tool belt and pick up a nail gun? Clearly not, so the government itself is not going to build any houses, is it? Instead, it’s going to rely on the tradesmen & contractors that already exist in the industry and who are already fully occupied doing work the private sector.
Secondly when government last got involved in house building, there was no zoning restriction on land, the scope of their construction generally excluded sealed roads, phone lines and even wastewater reticulation. Extensive use was made of native timbers.
So whatever government did in the past, it cannot do again.
Thanks for publishing my comment. Completing my thought:
If the government really wants to assist in this matter, it should concentrate its efforts on removing the impediments to constructing houses, of which there are many, rather than inserting itself in the process and becoming an impediment in its own right.
Of course it can do it, stop flogging off land for a start.
They are gutless they don’t have the will.
In Chch the property buyer for a large firm used the fact they were building State homes in the area to drive the price down of the properties close by .. This is an endictment of how State housing is being run . Another home owner was forced to sell and move to a motor home after years of harassment from State tenants next door . I understand no tenants have been removed in the last eighteen months . I am sure most state tenants are good tenants and realize how lucky they are and it is a minotity that tarnish their reputation.
The bad tenants have to be rehomed and perhaps they should all be put together in a group of homes far removed from others.
Time to reconsider eugenics Trevor. With an over populated and climate change afflicted world it makes sense to get the numbers down and who better to cull than those who are unable to live by the standards of common decency or contribute to society. They are generally one of the same.
If it is prohibited to live on DOC land in a bush shelter where can people actually legally live and defecate? Would they be classed as refugees and be taken in by another country?
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