Loafers Lodge fire: Council only inspected building twice in past decade
Wellington City Council only conducted on-site inspections at Loafers Lodge twice in the past decade, despite advice it would be more appropriate for such checks to happen every year.
The most recent check in 2018 found several problems including items being installed in an escape route that could combust in an emergency or block the fire exit.
Fire and smoke doors designed to prevent fire from spreading were also wedged open.
Wellington City Council chief planning officer Liam Hodgetts said the problems were worked on with the building owner over the following months and an infringement notice was issued.
There is a terrible grief at heart of the Loafers Lodge fire deaths and that is the lonely men who make up the death toll.
These are the men society had forgotten and contemptuously pushed away.
These are men who didn’t qualify for State Housing and proper wrap around services because those services are expensive and we refuse point blank to tax the rich more money to pay for that infrastructure.
It is far cheaper to house these lonely men in a squalid block exempt from proper fire regulations because that would cost money and these mens lives are not worth that investment are they?
It is a system that relegates lonely lost men into battery hen farms with the same apathy as we kettle beneficiaries with children into unsafe Motels.
There will be the performative art of grief expressed by Politicians and the humble thumbs up from community leaders for the outpouring of good will and how it brings out the best in us and thoughts and prayers and
and
and
and nothing will change.
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals with over $50million, let’s start by taxing them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry!
Our collective denial over how our underfunded social infrastructure fed a tragedy like Loafers Lodge is beneath the mana of the moment.
Tax. The. Rich.
Liam Hockings was a Facebook Comrade of mine. He deserved much better than to die alone in a fire like this for the men society didn’t care about.
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This is very sad. The fact that he had Hydrocephalus would have probably meant that health/social workers invariably gave him a box ticking diagnosis (probably the all encompassing schizophrenia or some other handy term) and left him to it. If we weren’t so beguiled by tv-land pop culture we perhaps would look after the real people on the ground better.
It’s the degeneracy. TV probably kept these people sedated while the parents where off claiming a child’s entertainment is not my responsibility.
Gin hag, some of these residents likely did have schizophrenia. It effects men more severely than women and it is the most tragic mental illness as it usually strikes in late teens early twenties. These are the men who were deinstitutionalised in the 1980s -90s and basically left to rot in shitty boarding houses.
One of the things that make me mad about the trans woke mob is their claim that trans are the most marginalized (especially when the likes of Shaneel Lal was giving Hipkins advice on the school curriculum).
Its such bull shit. People with schizophrenia most often men are the most marginalized.
There is a presumption that any extra taxation income will be spent in the areas most helpful to the needy. Believe that and the nearest shiny bridge is yours to buy.
First place to see how the extra taxation will be spent is to look at the $1B spent on mental health has improved to lot of those in need of those services. Has it made any difference? No.
The government cannot even tell you where they have spent the money. What makes anyone think that any additional taxation income will be spent where it is needed most?
Dreamers will dream but the reality is this government would spent it on more consultants, reports and restructures than actually let the taxation dollars trickle down to those in need (especially elderly white males). Health being a prime example.
That argument makes it all seem like a zero-sum game.
I do feel that the revenue gained from an Asset Tax could be used to provide more social housing and to build other necessary amenities.
It need not be particularly difficult to implement and I do feel that those with immense wealth ought to be willing and happy to pay tax towards some of these initiatives.
We do already have people housed, happy, and well looked after by the State, and these are people from all age groups, genders, and ethnicities. But there is still a significant housing shortage in this country.
Out of idle curiosity, how would you implement an asset tax?
An asset tax would normally be directed at one particular asset, say housing or even shares. Every legal entity with more than a certain amount of the asset would be required to pay a nominal amount of taxation on the value of it, or on the profits generated from it to a greater degree than what they would normally pay on the profits.
An asset tax can be one-off or it can be applicable on a yearly basis. The aim is not to unduly punish the wealthy; rather, what an asset tax is all about is every socioeconomic class pitching in, in times of war, famine, economic depression, pandemic, or other such crisis.
As such many economists would argue that an asset tax ought to only be implemented in conjunction with rises in the tax rates of personal income, GST, etc. However, in times of high inflation like we are experiencing currently, it makes more sense to consider implementing the asset tax only.
Other possibilities are: a Financial Transactions Tax; a Comprehensive Inheritance Taxation. Neither of these would be popular with voters; and both of those options would disrupt the economy to such an extent that other changes would need to be made, some of them brashly.
Another idea is a Mansion Tax. Here you place a tax, normally as little as one or two percent, on the purchase price of residential real estate above a certain value, say, $1million, although I would argue the case for $1.5million given the prevalence of $1million homes in many of our major cities. The money raised here could easily be collected and redistributed into social housing.
We closed all the mental health institutions in Nz and opened the doors. Seemed like a good thing to do but we never matched the care once out into the community, that is the govt shame. ALL NZ GOVTS, still is and feels like always will be. If we don’t listen they will continue to not be heard. We suck.
I think that was all the big plan by the political class to remove cost to the healthsystem thereby removing.hospitals. Also because the victims who are thrown on the street are in a different world those that were instrumental in closing down the hospital did not care. It was part of the Neo liberal agenda probably.
Which arsehole came up with the name for this overpriced dump. Was it an attempt at humour or just outright contempt for the mostly vulnerable residents?
Martyn makes most of the points necessary so I don’t have to, apart from noting that the neo liberal state and local Government is expert at fudging accountability on virtually anything via the “multiple agency” tactic–“it wasn’t meeeee…” combined with cruel & sadistic under funding for working class needs.
Yes, well I was sickened by both the PM and the Mayor responding to the horrific dying of Loafers’Lodge residents by warbling about how diverse Newtown is, and how this diverse community looks after each other, in other words, this is the poor folks’ patch on camera, so let’s keep an eye on the PR and make the situation look better than it is and us look better than we are. It was the stuff of nightmares affecting the people who politicians prefer to forget.The survivors will never ever forget, and nor can they move on with the glib greasiness which politicians do.
What a difference it makes having money and influence, wherever it comes from, as Max Key finds out yet again, with his Knight of the Realm dad, dirty John, phoning the Justice Department on his behalf, answering the phone on his son’s behalf, and lying per usual, as that’s an easy, lazy, way to get through life. That dirty John is emasculating his own son won’t bother him a schekl, nor will the propriety of the situation, for propriety is not part of John’s repertoire. After all, it was other people’s offspring that John shrieked in Parliament for Labour to get some guts and send off to fight in other people’s wars. How disgusting he is.
Got a parliament which kneecapped the Commissioner for Children, for deprived children and for vulnerable babes in arms, then know that nobody can really count on them very much either.
I agree with you, Snow White.
Why are people so surprised we have known for a very long time single older men were having problems finding decent accommodation. We need to look after all NZers everyone needs a decent roof over their heads.
Who made it harder to be eligible for state housing, where are the homes for our ageing population we need to get our a into g now.
I agree but it will not be solved until action is taken by central government, not merely words spoken.
forget the state – lets get back to being a community.
I think you have just sumed up society today in that one statement. ‘Power to the Strong’ everyone else on our society and especially those like Mike the Juggler can go get stuffed or get burnt in a fire. Those with power as proven though there own actions don’t give a stuff
Totally agree Martyn. In wgtn, they have rounded up all the druggies and put them in one apartment building (Could be wrong but I think it may have been one emptied out before demolition). its causing hell in the city.
So they can do that but cant erect purpose built accommodation for the marginalised. What is wrong with higher rise accommodation where everyone has a decent room and bathroom suitable for vulnerable people. Non fall windows, fire resistant materials, low maintenance materials, sprinklers, fire doors etc as well as communal living areas and entertainment areas. Then staff it with a 24 hour concierge so they can help residents with basic issues (attending to maintenance issues, help with contacting social and other services, checking on people and contacting relatives when the people arent seen for a few days etc).
Low key so it isnt seen as an institution but is seen as a bit of basic help for marginalised people who want to feel they are living independently.
Hail to Wellington City Mission which has been advocating for a wet house for alcoholics so they can take in men particularly, who would not be denied a place because they couldn’t go ‘dry’. I think they will be watched and enjoy periods of companionship and be happy without overdoing it. It hasn’t been built or provided yet, so keep up pressure. (An old Yorkshire? saying dating back to the 16th century, ‘Fine words butter no parsnips’, sets a suitably obscure tone about this great idea.
Also it indicates a truth to the educated ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’.) So there is no shame in keeping on banging the drum for betterment which is needed, just change the tune and moderation so as to appear new and fresh!
This is from a report about houses and pensions for destitute and elderly in late 1800s.
The Old-age Pensions Act of 1898 thus becomes the major welfare advance of the nineteenth cen-tury, a source of considerable pride to its Liberal sponsors, and an important component in New Zealand’s claim to be a ‘social laboratory’. At the same time, there are always needs which are not adequately met by income maintenance schemes, and situations for which other forms of assistance may be more appropriate…
Members of the Ashburton and North Canterbury Charitable Aid Board visiting the Home at night were obliged to carry an umbrella to protect themselves from the bugs which dropped from the ceiling. The Home’s committee even considered erecting tents for the inmates to sleep in during summer when the problem was at its worst. Nevertheless, the Ashburton Home was not replaced by a new institu-tion, the Tuarangi Old Men’s Home, until 1902.,,
In Wellington the Benevolent Trustees boarded out their old men until the construction of the Wellington Benevolent Institution, or Ohiro Home, in 1892. Problems were immediately apparent, for the practice simply concentrated the old men in one place and exposed them to one another’s ill humour without the control and regimentation that could be exerted in a fully institutional setting. At least one of Wellington’s boarding houses had a central city location, far too close to public houses for sobriety and order to prevail…
When the old men were allowed to keep their earn-ings on condition that they buy warm winter clothing, they promptly spent the lot on drink and created a disturbance that the Trustees long remembered as an example of supreme ingratitude.(1890)
https://www.nzjh.auckland.ac.nz/docs/1983/NZJH_17_1_02.pdf
Noticeably drinking to excess was a way to achieve relief and some pleasure for exhausted, isolated men working in ‘the bush’ and without family or relatives. Alcohol to excess is still a way of men and women wasting their lives and money today despite efforts of women (WCTU) to prevent them being preyed on by those purveyors who are unprincipled.
The closure of places such as accommodation parks to make way for upscale retirement villages should have been under more regulation instead of it being yet another exercise in crony capitalism. Yes, there are people who wind up in these sorts of places, largely because all other viable options have been taken away.
too many overheads. dwindling returns. the fossil fueled generations are over. flotsam and jetsam. there is a better way.
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