Finally!
The Human Rights Commission has stopped trying to tell us what to say (as opposed to protecting our right to say it) and focused on the abuse of human rights the emergency housing band aid has become.
We started booking Motels and stuffing beneficiaries into them after the Key Government was shamed into doing so after pictures of people living in cars surfaced in the media.
This programme was expanded due to Covid and because the Government aren’t building nearly enough State Houses, it has become an infected wound opening 1 million per day to kettle homeless beneficiaries into dangerous housing situations.
That ham fisted attempt to do better was underfunded with very little check and balance built into it.
Predictably it has imploded and the Ministry’s have all pretend to review the situation internally to ensure more of them are found accountable for this clusterfuck.
The Human Rights commission have taken. blow torch to this abuse and shouldn’t remove it.
Time and time and time again our State provision of services is found to be severely lacking because the Politicians refuse to fund the social infrastructure properly because that would require higher taxes from the very wealthy who refuse point blank to do that.
It is always the poorest and the must vulnerable who have no power in front of the greedy and self interested State.
Listening to Carmel Sepuloni pretending to respond to this criticism with a bullshit internal report is bad enough, but her defence that ‘we’ve just put in a complaints process for people’ is outrageous when you consider that should have existed from the very beginning of the programme!
Her pointing to the addition of oversight 5 years in as a solution is merely acknowledgement of how fucked this sitruatuin has been for those living under it!
All power to the arm of the Human Rights Commission in holding the State to account!
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Another nail in the coffin of this ” kind ” government
uh huh–and do tell us again how the Natzos are going to improve this situation…maybe Mr Luxury Luxon could spare one or two of his modest seven pad portfolio to house some people with few options bar a dive motel.
The fact is NZ National are ideologically opposed to public housing being provided wholly by the state–so they will do precisely nothing.
And Labour are doing a real good job are they .25000 on the waiting list while letting arse hole gang member stay in place intimidating neighbours .18 Months and not 1 eviction but in Chch one poor lady had to sell up as it was so bad .
What will National do . For renters their plan is to get local agencies to build and run houses to rent with access to social services to support the tenants.
For others they will reform the RMA to get more houses built and encourage groups who run re t to buy firms . This is the way that many European countries have used to encourage home ownership.
yes corprate landlords run some social housing in europe BUT ARE HIGHLY REGULATED whilst we all know in NZ it would be unregulated open slather….and therein lies the important difference.
plus mixed projects once govt funding is secured tend (uk model) reduce social housing places and increase the private part of the scheme…cuz profit
Hopefully they get round to addressing the flagrant breaches of the 1990’s Bill Of Rights during the pandemic too by this “kind” government under a so-called “emergency” (there clearly wasn’t one).
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM224792.html
Specifically wrt to Articles 10 and 11 (as well as clear breaches of 13, 14, 16 and 18).
The argument that there are ‘no rights’ has been put froward by some ,,,, this is only true if there is no such thing as ‘Society’ ,,, a position that Margret Thatcher adopted as she started the neo-lib chapter of history that we have been living for 40+ years ,,, with society and rights going backwards during this time.
The truth is we have rights ,,, and with them comes obligations.
Also ,,, with Freedom comes with Responsibilities , as every parent should teach their kids…..
And the way a society treats it’s most vulnerable, defines how civilized (or uncivilized) that society is ….
….. These are the starting points for any discussion on housing ,,, houses which should be built on a two way street.
To many ‘ with’s ‘ in my comment about freedom & responsibility ,,,,, it should have read,,, with Freedom comes Responsibilities ,,or ,, Freedom comes with Responsibilities
Maybe too many commas as well? What’s with that? A stutter? ,,,,,,
we have no rights as such awake we have the fixed parameters our rulers who ever they may be ALLOW us at any particular time.
Our leaders really should go through a “refresher” course on Avoiding Unintended Consequenes” followed up by a week living among and with our poorest families, BEFORE they are allowed to make any decisions for the rest of us. It could even humble them imo
The government refresher on breaching it’s own citizens human rights comes next year.
A fair number of them are going to be merged with the dole queue.
the Human Rights Commission could help NZ have more than enough housing to make it cheap by advocating for property owners to have a ‘right to build’ on their property.
So goodbye heritage and character restrictions that stop more housing being built where people want to live.
it may have escaped your notice ada but this is a national crisis…white picket fences are a luxury not a neccesity.
and in my suburb most if not all properties are sub divided with rental boxes in what was the garden.
GG, I have also witnessed the roaring trade of rented sheds. It’s a booming trade all around my region. They literally can’t build them fast enough to deliver and rent them out. At least some are doing what they can and there’s no shame in making a living from that.
Sounds like your suburb is doing its bit for solving the housing crisis.
I’m actually against the NIMBY’s love of heritage and white picket fences.
ada it’s been like this before the current crisis round our way, more to do with the local availability of decent paying jobs than anything else
smaller homes would help the infuence of property porn encourages expectations that a frankly too high a young couple should be happy enough with a 2 up 2 down rather than some pseudo american ‘town house’ sorry chaps we all have to lower our expectations sometime
and the finnish ‘housing 1st model’ would help homelessness a subject jacinda probably avoided with the groovy party animal finnish PM
Wrote to the Human Rights Commission once about the circumstances I have found myself in, the discrimination, the disability, the lack of govt support to be told they didnt have a mandate to do anything, was a complete waste of time dealing with them.
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