Green ‘attack’ on landlords like ACTs war on tenants?

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Greens’ renters policy ‘attacks landlords’ – ACT

The ACT Party has hit out at a freshly-announced Green Party “renters rights” policy, saying it “attacks landlords” and “paints them as bad people”.

Are you kidding me?

1 – Fuck the Landlords

2 – The war on tenants by Landlords was already declared by ACT and National!

There is an unspoken promise between the neoliberal State and the untaxed capital gains private landlord class that the neoliberal State never builds enough State Houses to alleviate housing desperation so that the untaxed capital gains private landlord class can exploit that housing desperation ON TOP OF getting a $1.5Billion annual subsidy in the form of the Accommodation Allowance EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

So the neoliberal State work hand in glove with the interests of the untaxed capital gains private landlord class to constantly keep desperation in the Housing market by never building enough State Houses WHILE handing taxpayer funded subsidies to the untaxed capital gains private landlord class!

This rigged casino where Landlords can constantly use their own debt to buy more property and out leverage first time home buyers just adds insult to injury.

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On top of this, ACT and National want to give that same untaxed capital gains private landlord class the power to evict you at will so they can kick out the smelly domestic renters and exploit the new 100000 migrant workers coming into the country! ACT and National want remove all the healthy home and environmental regulations and put back in place the tax loopholes that benefit the untaxed capital gains private landlord class.

On top of this, the Real Estate pimps are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Right and are dangling the promise of house prices jumping 20% if National and ACT win.

The Housing Crisis is a political decision and you as renters should be incandescent with motherfucking rage at how this has been allowed to continue and when ACT claim basic rent rise freezes are a ‘war on landlords’ when the Landlords started the war is an outrageous smear on renters!

Fuck. The. Landlords.

Smile when they scream and freeze those fucking rentals!

Stick it to your Landlord this election Comrades.

 

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50 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting response from the head of the property investors. There’s nothing like having a warm dry kūmara over your head at this time of the year.

    • The real estate developers have certainly had it far too good for too long (and recall that it was the near-zero-cost corporate loans under Z.I.R.P. that created that situation).

      But the problem with rent control is that you are actually discouraging private investment in new housing. Reversing the relentless, five-decade collapse in real wages would be more effective — particularly when the new homes currently being constructed are all of such poor quality.

      Industry may still refuse to build fast enough. Returning to mass construction of new public housing estates, both on green-field sites and as part of a resumption of slum clearance schemes, is likely the only way out of the home shortage itself.

      • discouraging private investment in housing is a good thing IF you have a state house building corporation suitably funded and with land banks confiscated..but in lil old small minded ‘do nothing’ nz that’s not gonna happen is it kristoff

  2. Unfortunately Labour has given the electorate far far more reasons to vote for ACT than a handfull of unpalatable policy.

    • Unfortunately that’s true, except it’s the Greens idea. In politics when you push too hard without thinking you will always get pushback, this will be the political norm for the foreseeable future – shove and counter shove, no consensus.

    • Unless you are renting and talking what percentage of your income? That would be a hell of a lot more important than someone in detention getting shit food. FFS

    • This is the fine print for ACTs tax cut. They want you to give that to their donors, whoops, I mean your landlords

  3. Martyn – NZ does need a form of rent control….most Landlords are okay, but the rent increases are eye watering.

  4. It’s a fact that some landlords are not providing accomodation that is fit for purpose. Given this fact and the shortage of available accomodation, regulation and policing are the only solution. Surely good landlords have nothing to fear from reasonable regulation. Unfortunately the cost of policing will ultimately fall onto the renters.

    • Exactly Peter. Brooke ‘Van You can’t handle the truth’ is being so disingenuous with her “attack” bs that she should be ashamed. Sure it’s unfortunate that you have an idiot like Davidson anywhere near fronting these ideas because it becomes 100% about the messenger. Then you have all the threats. Go on then sell off all your rental properties, may be someone else could buy them and not have to rent. Oh but the brightline test might mean you have to pay tax. Join the f’ing club.

    • If you do that, you will further reduce the supply of rental accommodation, pushing rents higher.

      Essentially our problem is that the rent paid is high relative to the quality of accommodation on offer, and renters cannot afford to pay more. If they could, landlords would offer a higher quality product (again, of course, at a higher price).

      I’ve done this in Wellington, because renters in this market can on average pay more than in other markets. More yuppies/corporates/political types on decent incomes renting than you’d expect in Auckland/Christchurch etc…

      But fundamentally people are paying high rents because land prices are high. If you lower land prices (by enabling enough land to meet demand for housing) then rents charged to achieve a return on land will fall. All else equal, as incomes have not moved in this scenario, landlords will produce higher quality housing so rents overall do not move.

      I know understanding economics is treated equivalent to being a flat earther on this site, and tbh this probably won’t get past the mods because it makes too much sense, but there it is. It’s all about willingness to pay.

      • The State has the resource to blow the private housing sector out of the water if it really wanted too…it just won’t. It’s as simple as that.

      • Oh well thank you for gracing us with your knowledge. We’re not worthy.

        Does “rent high relative to quality of accommodation” translate to a f’ing rip off in the vernacular of mere mortals? You’ve basically said landlords can rip people off because they can get away with it.

        Having existing housing stock gobbled up by fewer and fewer landowners doesn’t help.

      • matt how does the value of your asset (land) going up count as an extra expense that mustr be passed on to tenants?

  5. Landlording: the one business where we don’t question – “if you can’t afford to sell a safe product/service it’s unfair if we make you because you might not be able to afford to sell that product anymore”. If NZ society has decided that it is ok for a large percentage of it’s people to be renting permanently (and not just that crap one you live in for a year or two while you were at Uni) then we need to make these homes safe and stable – for the good of all society.

    • NZ society never decided that it is ok for a large percentage of it’s people to be renting permanently.

      Baby boomers watched their share club parents get destroyed in 1987. Then they had Don Brash and the Real Estate spruikers telling them ad nauseum that the baby boom population blip meant there would not be a big enough youth population to support their pension requirements. So a mom & pop rental or two became a wise option. Then the National party started selling million-dollar visas to people who wanted a CCP bolthole in an Auckland suburb, people who in their home country could not practise “landlordism”. At the same time that this competition grew between the new landlords, Roger and Ruthless pulled the plug on the cheap Housing Corp loans that had in the past given first-home buyers an ability to compete with landlords. NZ society never “decided” to become a nation of renters or that we should live in a banker’s paradise.

      • I agree with you, it was political decisions that were made by successive governments that caused this to happen ( and I can tell you, I never voted for it!) but it has happened that there ARE now a large percentage of people who are in a permanent rental cycle and we can’t just carry on with rental laws that were made for the days when the majority of people just had few years of renting before they settled down. And we can’t let people and communities wait for indefinite years while the polies give us jam tomorrow, no jam today solutions for the home buying reality we now live in.

  6. A read of the Greens rental plan shows how out of touch with reality they are .If they get into power in a 3 way split with Labour and TPM the country will suffer and unfortunately the poor will be so much worst off as the wealthy stop spending and hid their money .

  7. I have seen rentals that are so disgusting they should be condemned. It’s 2023 folks!!
    And yet the landlord/lady cheerfully charges maximum rent doing the bareest minimum of maintenance, safe in a desperate renters market.
    Disgusting & degrading. 40 years of neoliberalism has turned egalitarian NZ into greedy NZ.
    I’m sick of it. Death to neoliberalism.

  8. Classic socialism: Impose regulations that causes inflation in the rental market, then propose more regulation banning inflation. The outcome is authoritarianism.
    References:
    Cuba
    Venezuela
    USSR
    etc

    • Classic capitalism. ‘I am making money so you can all get f’d.’ Anything to stop people f’ing over others is authoritarianism.

      What a ridiculously simplistic argument. Is the UK socialist? Canada? They a WOF for rentals

    • classic capitalism andrew get rid of all regulation

      alabama…hell forget the list…the USA and UK both not shitholes

  9. The political drain pipe that everyone’s being sucked down is one of logical fallacies and controlling headfuckery. If you haven’t yet come to understand just how easy it is to build your own house then you’re being oppressed by an otherwise weak, greedy system feeding your money into the foreign owned banksters.
    Building a big, dumb, ugly, faux, plasti-mansion is a little more technical but that’s not what having a home is if you’re living in a car or under decorative shrubbery on a traffic island.
    Are there free home building classes with a ready supply of basic materials and equipment? Are there plots of land set aside for the construction of such projects? If no, then why not? Our AO/NZ’s bigger than the UK by 29 K sq km and there are only 5.2 million of us so there must be a little spare land going somewhere.
    Not having a house isn’t about not having a house. It’s about us lot being so conditioned, so brainwashed and emotionally contorted and controlled by Bog Money that can act against us in their best interests that I believe we’ve gone way beyond being controlled by autocrats and psychopaths. We’re now being exploited by autocrats and psychopaths.
    Our lives and living conditions more closely resemble an episode of Black Mirror rather than of people having a good life on a rich land where everything important is all but freely available. We have literally become sheep. We get herded to here and there and although we might mutter and bleat then shit where we eat we’re being mustered through the bankster doors to be enslaved until we die. And even then, I bet, immediately after we die and we’re lying their thinking where the fuck am I, we’ll get a txt from the bank reminding us that our rent or mortgage is due.
    On an even darker note. We’re telegraphing to an increasingly rapacious and dangerous world that we’re weak and compliant so come here and take our AO/NZ off us.

    • ‘Are there free home building classes with a ready supply of basic materials and equipment? Are there plots of land set aside for the construction of such projects?’

      Yes! @Battlefield Earth. That’s how simple it can be. It brings tears to my eyes…..

  10. Will Marama Davidson spend the budget that they have been given for their ‘associate minister of/for the homeless’ for the homeless or are they hoping for extra super duper good points from their owners the Labour Party by not spending the budget?

  11. I thought landlords were always mainly bad people. They are considerate, fair, peeps in a place like Switzerland, where everybody rents. Because proper standards and checks and balances are in place. Unfortunately you can not rely on the moral judgement of a landlord, when profit is king before people.

  12. The brutal way to sort this is to scrap the housing supplement benefit.
    It supposedly makes expensive rent “affordable” for the tenant.
    But what is actually happening here?
    The tax payer provides funds to the tenant who pays it to the landlord who in turn hands it on to the Australian bank in interest, they then take off shore as profit. A great outcome?
    The housing supplement actually enables the landlord to charge a higher rent than the market (tenant) can actually pay.
    Remove it and yes there will wails of pain for a bit . But a new balance would come to pass with in months of lower rents lower house prices and a true balance of market would result.
    Will this occur ? no it wont. So the landlord / tenant issues expressed will only continue to continue

    • Yes, the accommodation supplement inflates rents. The only way to stop that kind of inflation is a rent freeze then pull the subsidy. When Labour stopped the smp subsidies to farmers it was tough but most of the farmers survived.

      Or make the subsidy transparent, paid directly to the beneficiary landlord. Then next time David Seymour is in government he can benebash and move to an ‘efficient’ rental market.

  13. Yes Jase some landlords do an appalling job, on maintenance and mould and then have the gall to put the rent up. They create a bad name for the proactive good landlords.

  14. As some of us are beginning to discuss, we have a few options going forward, and one of them is to “eat the rich”. That the Greens are being sensible and just asking for the human rights of renters to be respected by people who are so wealthy that they have a spare property or seven or fifteen or thirty eight and out of the goodness of their damned hearts, allow some of us less fortunate souls to seek shelter in small parts of their respective kingdoms.

    Generation Rent is a sizeable mass of the electoral population, by numbers a far greater than the wealth protecting class, so a political party would be considered clever to represent this ever growing under class. The alternative is Paris, because there is only so long that you can let these obvious inequalities continue to increase before “sorry” stops meaning anything.

    Brasil has just proven that their democracy has survived Bolsonaro, by banning him from elections for eight years. But after our local election debacle that at least here in Auckland has left a stale pale male dominated council and nowhere near the energy required for radical reforms; Wellington would do well to ensure that in October there really is a representative voting turnout, or more of us will start arguing that democracy is dead at 35%!!!

  15. right wingers dont want to give you a 3% payrise but more than keen to charge more than 3% increases in rent, where is the money meant to come from?

    • ohhh please do cabbage house..it’s always threatened but never done by rightwingers because they know a cash cow when they see it…..media polls saying however many perecent are ‘thinking’ of selling isn’t actual selling is it? too much of a cushy number

  16. ACT want to give landlords the right to demand 20-30% increases in rents. I personally do not think this is fair.

    By the way, you could completley deregulate rental proprties in this country, and you would still have homelessness, and people would stll be hit with high rents.

    To be honest, I really think putting people who cannot find anywhere to live in motels is way better than nothing.

    • I’d even go as far to say allow motel owners to rent out there units. Then let’s see how happy landlords are to sit on unrented properties. Let’s see what happens then.

  17. I’d even go as far to say allow motel owners to rent out there units. Then let’s see how happy landlords are to sit on unrented properties. Let’s see what happens then.

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