Council’s callous indifference to East Christchurch
It was the ninth anniversary of the September 2010 earthquake last week, the first of the two big earthquakes to hit the city, but driving through some parts of East Christchurch you might think the earthquake was last week.
Meanwhile parts of the inner city are looking splendid – hundreds of millions have been poured into public sector projects and infrastructure that look amazing. Private property developers are all but invisible. They are land-banking, refusing to develop until their profits are assured. It doesn’t stop them from endlessly complaining though. The slow development is everyone else’s fault according to these experts at milking the system.
Property developers in the inner city are being given ratepayer handouts of $15,000 per apartment they build and the council has called for a report to see how much more support they can give the likes of Fletcher Building to increase their profits. Rates rebates for people buying these new apartments are being talked about on top of the handouts to developers.
Consider this for a moment: Christchurch City Council has given $8.5 million to developers building in the city centre from 2014 to 2018 (that’s the $15,000 handout for every apartment they build) for expensive apartments in the inner city. But the council refuses to give a single cent to rebuild or refurbish council housing destroyed in the earthquakes or abandoned since then by council refusal to renovate.
Christchurch is now about 500 council rental units short what it had before the earthquakes.
Just to make sure you understand that: In the middle of a housing crisis the council is pouring money into developers pockets to build expensive apartments but is refusing to put a single dollar towards housing for low-income tenants and families.
This week the local Chamber of Commerce made a big push for the council to sell assets so they could put more money into “maximising the opportunities” of the new, shiny, sexy (white-elephant) half-a-billion-dollar stadium the council has prioritised.
Naturally they didn’t explain how this was a higher priority than the needs of council tenants in uninsulated units who have been advised to put bubble wrap on their windows to keep out the cold.
Naturally the other two main mayoral candidates – Lianne Dalziel and Darrell Park – have been falling over themselves to suck up to business interests with families struggling on low incomes just an inconvenient distraction.
That’s life in neo-liberal Christchurch.
PRIORITIES! PEOPLE CAN’T LIVE IN A STADIUM
This type of bullshit happens all over NZ the poorer your suburb the less the councils spend
You wonder how some of these idiots can sleep at night. I hope you can rally a good number of the people affected to vote. We could sure do with more mayors that dont suck up to business. For them the best thing about the earthquake will be the opportunity to make out like bandits by selling assets. Nothing like a good earthquake to persuade politicians to further privatise the public domain. Not only can they get the council to spend the proceeds on them but they get to snap up a few monopoly assets as well. Cant beat a good monopoly asset for a guaranteed income stream.
It is a valid argument that not enough has been done in the East but this is a historical situation and Brighton has been ignored for years. I do not understand why as if Brighton was in any other city in the World it would be treated as an asset. Im am sure Minto’s obvious distaste for developers would not help Chch advance and grow. His left leaning mind set sounds good on the hustings but is not so great when put in action . We can see this Nationally with the Greens and their lack of traction . Chch needs a new broom with a business head to get traction in all areas including the East
East Christchurch typifies what’s happened to small town and poor communities for decades. The wealthy skew everything to their own benefit and the poor and marginalised go to the back of the queue, and are ignored or vilified. (Paula the bene basher, Metiria Turei, the racist “dole bludger” cartoons that infest the ODT)