As TDB pointed out last month, the draconian nature of this Government’s mean spirted welfare sanctions are truly despicable!
The Government is being warned that clawing back $100 a week in subsidies for thousands of struggling households could further increase homelessness.
The risk falls disproportionately on groups overrepresented in receiving those housing subsidies, including Māori, Pasifika, older and younger people and the disabled, according to officials at the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).
The new policy, which changes how payments from boarders impact housing subsidies, will hit the pockets of tens of thousands of people when it comes into effect in March next year.
Currently, payments from a household’s first two boarders have no impact on those subsidies, a policy introduced in 1992 to ease the financial burden by encouraging greater use of empty bedrooms in state houses.
Welfare rates were being slashed at the time, while state housing tenants had to pay market rates. It was hoped that single parents in larger homes, in particular, would be incentivised to take on a boarder or two to offset their housing costs.
A policy designed to help solo mums and dad renters use spare rooms to lower the cost of rent is being dumped and those Renters will now need to find $100 per week!
It’s so brutal and vile.
For so many, finding an extra $100 per week will be crippling and the difference between paying rent that month and not.
This is the latest attack on people needing welfare.
Every 3 months National roll out a new threshold that triggers benefit sanctions and to date everyone is so frightened of being dumped off welfare they meet all their obligations. In response, National lower the threshold…
…all in 5 working days. This isn’t welfare, it’s a punishment system designed to trip beneficiaries up so they can be disqualified from welfare.
We are throwing 50 000 off welfare into the teeth of rising Unemployment while punishing the disabled by forcing them to access the dreaded MSD for any support.
Forcing beneficiaries onto a card payment system that they can’t use to pay their rent will force them onto the streets, that’s the point!
This is wilful malice in the hope it breaks beneficiaries and makes them stop using welfare altogether.
We are literally forcing them onto the streets.
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Do you think it’s possible that Labour are watching all this shit and are at least saying to themselves “so this is how it’s done. Get in fast in the first year and do all the dirty work early”
But Sleepy, they are well into the second year now and the dirty work is just getting dirtier. I expect the chameleon to change early next year when Seymour and Peters get Luxon to announce their new cabinet.
It will show a softer approach, we may even get Seymour as Finance Minister and his budget will turn out to be beneficial to the bottom feeders with the caveat of a solid review over the next year.
Code for lollies now surgery later.
Have you heard Labour stating they will repeal this?
Another move in the master plan to kick both the “lower socio’s” working poor & non working beneficiaries to the curb literally. Lucky we will/are building bigger prison’s to house the great unwashed into submission of our failing state. Then we can privatise our prison to offshore corporates for our tax payer funded mega housing prison’s.
After all you’ve got to get your incarcerated numbers up to make it worth their while to profiteer off our people’s misery. The mentally ill, drug & alcohol addicted, dirt poor diaspora deserves to be hidden and not seen. Who said National, Act & NZ Last are not investing in social housing? Yes they are.
Rise up our people/ Tangata Whenua/ Tangata Tirirti to the ballot box we go together………
Luxon/Seymour/Peters STOP RIPPING OFF THE NEEDY TO FUND YOUR GREEDY SUPPORTERS. Haven’t you done enough damage to our country and its people? Expectations of five working days, with our current postal system, shows the total absence of a heart and soul. You are no better than the Israeli ‘mass butchers’. Go and look long and hard in a mirror!
Paying benefits is far cheaper than paying for incarceration, victim support and hospitalization.
Where’s the outburst of anger from the Taxpayers Union?
This is Taxpayer union policy .The COC have no policy of their own .They just do what ever the doners tell them to do .Yes over 100k per year to have a person in jail which would cover 5 unemployed .If we spent a billion per year on wrap around services for homeless and unemployed a lot of jails would soon be only partly filled .The other thing is boost the court funding and get people out of remand ,some of which sit in jail waiting to go to court for 2 years or longer .
yeah – but private security, counseling and health companies won’t mind taking those tax dollars. why have a fence at the top of the cliff when cleaning up the mess at the bottom is so much more lucre-ative
Wilful malice is not what we want or expected from our government. If you hate people you politicians you should be disbarred from ever putting yourself forward, and if elected, after a period of trial having shown yourself unworthy, proven to be affected by the disdainful superiority to anyone who doesn’t pass as one of your lot, your job and perks are withdrawn and you will have to find your own sugar daddy or mistress away from politics.
Contrast the speed that 3-houses-Luxon (trimmed down from 7-houses-Luxon) reduced the brightline test to allow himself to sell properties making tax free capital gains when the govt first came in, and enjoyed the economic legacy of the Labour years. With moderate unemployment, most businesses having survived the covid disruptions, few rough sleepers, hospitals that functioned, pay equity for lowpaid females, 3 waters keeping council rates in check, a fair system for Waitangi seashore claims, state of the art hybrid ro ro ferries on order, and an extensive capital works roadmap keeping construction workers in the country well into the future – but how quickly that all evaporated.
Now, after Luxon waved his neoliberal wand, there is burgeoning unemployment and burgeoning rough sleepers and burgeoning bankruptcies and burgeoning power bills and burgeoning costs of living and workers fleeing across the Tasman as a result of Luxon’s austerity, and a traffic light welfare crackdown by MSD, that’s getting tough on single parents providing accommodation by taking in boarders.
That tax free income Luxon made way back in 2023, has to be paid for by someone, and it looks like it will be those well-to-do wealthy single parents on an MSD benefit, in a kind of reverse Robinhood maneuver.
But at least we can all sleep safely at night knowing that we are getting $2.7 billion worth of brand new military firepower – yeah right.
When I was unemployed the boarder provision: You could receive an accommodation supplement plus income from boarders without any reduction in the accommodation supplement plus the a.s. was tax free. was a literal life saver. Not least having supportive company.
This new scrooge cruelty is literally ” FINANCIAL WAR ” on the most struggling of us.
This government are vile scum of the bloated ” sorted ” on kiwis. Literally Dickensian.
This is Taxpayer union policy .The COC have no policy of their own .They just do what ever the doners tell them to do .Yes over 100k per year to have a person in jail which would cover 5 unemployed .If we spent a billion per year on wrap around services for homeless and unemployed a lot of jails would soon be only partly filled .The other thing is boost the court funding and get people out of remand ,some of which sit in jail waiting to go to court for 2 years or longer .
Well Luxon spouts on about growth but has not defined which type of growth he is talking about .Clearly he is not talking about the well being of ALL kiwis so he is passing with flying colors with creating growth in all the areas you list .
These sort of policies destroy societies.
We’re well on the way toward fueling the resentments and inequalities that have spawned the MAGA movement and resulted in the mess as chaos that USA experiences.
Want to understand National and Act’s vision for NZ? – look at USA.
When I was by myself before getting remarried I could not have managed without a boarder it payed my power bills and medical expenses and other bills that cropped up. As I was on a benefit at the time, it was gobbled up after paying rent. In that period of time of 3 years, I only got 1 advance on my benefit. By doing this it will cost more.
They could clear things up with less unambiguous grammar.
What the hell does this even mean?:
“Any other activity that we require you to (including rehabilitation but not medical treatment, voluntary work or activity in the community).”
Does it mean
“”Any other activity that we require you to; including rehabilitation, but not medical treatment, not voluntary work and not activity in the community.”
or “Any other activity that we require you to including rehabilitation (but not medical treatment), voluntary work (or activity in the community).”
or any other permutation they feel like using at the time they’re dealing with a client.
.
if you haven’t worked it out already – this is a deliberate agenda to fleece OUR tax spend by the top-feeders