High court challenge as government blunders on selling state houses while families live in cars and garages
The 9th of November in the Wellington High Court has been set aside for a hearing of State Housing Action Incorporated’s legal challenge to the government decision to sell 1124 state houses in Tauranga.
Last month SHA Inc. filed papers for a judicial review because we can see no way the Minister of State Housing Bill English or Social Housing Minister Paula Bennet can justify the sale in terms of the statutory objectives of the government’s so-called State Housing Reform Programme.
In other words we believe the sale is illegal. On Wednesday November the 9th the Wellington High Court will decide if it agrees.
This decision to sell to IHC (though its subsidiary Accessible Housing) is abandoning the core government responsibility of providing quality, affordable homes to families who need them in Tauranga. Over time the government sees itself abandoning this responsibility for the rest of the country as well. It is already eyeing up state houses in other areas to sell in their thousands.
This is an unbelievable betrayal of New Zealanders at a time when many thousands of families live in cars, garages or hopelessly overcrowded homes.
It’s important to repeat here that only the government has the capacity and resources to meet the housing crisis for low-income families. It can borrow money more cheaply, use economies of scale when building and has plenty of spare land capacity.
Other niche social housing providers will never be able to meet the demand. For Bill English and National this is an unconscionable decision driven by ideology.
Despite the lawyers giving their services to the challenge free of charge it is still very expensive to meet the cost of filing fees, hearing fees etc for the case.
If any readers of the Daily Blog can help with the expense of taking this challenge then please make your donation to the account number below:
Account name: State Housing Action Inc.
Kiwibank account No: 38 9018 0028715 00
We wouldn’t ask for financial help if it wasn’t so critical in taking this case.
Hope you can help.
John, sorry to see that the people of Christchurch are so asleep they voted for more status quo, i.e. more impoverishment and abuse by usual suspects.
As for this item, well the government no longer sees itself as responsible for anything, other than maintaining the bankers’ Ponzi scheme, and perhaps some military commitment to imperialism by the USA.
The system is corrupted by Yankee doodle dandy Shonkey sadly, you know the man that chases every buck he will screw out of anyone, just for fun.
Sicko he is sadly as evil as any corporate bludger.
Wake up Christchurch you are being screwed by the master of corruption don’t you know?
Correct, Key also stated that getting rid of the $1000 Kiwisaver startup(to save money) would make” not one bit of difference” to the numbers joining Kiwisaver.
From today’s Herald
“Finance Minister Bill English scrapped the $1000 incentive in the May 2015 Budget and despite Prime Minister John Key stating that the change would not make a “blind bit of difference” to the number of people who join, it did hit sign-ups.
Analysis by the Herald in March found the average monthly sign up rate dropped from 15,029 in the year to June 2015 to 8996 per month in the wake of the change.”
How can Key have credibility on anything that comes from his mouth if that statement alone is anything to go by. It is hardly surprising that record violent crimes , record homelessness and record house prices have occurred under his watch, not Labour’s or anyone else’s, his watch alone.
Why is this? As Cleangreen has said, he screws the last dollar from everyone including policing, health, education and the ordinary kiwi citizen!
Judicial review may sound good, but going by my experience, they will look at what the law says, and what it allows the government to do. Some of what I read above may be considered as irrelevant considerations. Of course government has better access to credit, to finance and can achieve outcomes based on economic activity of scale, but that may not be relevant enough for this review to go the way hoped for.
As for the law, we know the government has over years been changing the laws bit by bit, thus giving it more freedom to do just that, which it plans to do. Sadly most people, and that includes the hopeless media, they do not bother reading and analysing detail when it comes to proposed law changes. So few realise the risks and dangers, and ignore the changes that are put into effect.
Once the government comes and sells state houses, some get angry, but as the law has been changed, they have no leg to stand on. People are busy sleep wandering in New Zealand, that is my daily experience, it is very depressing.
And this is just one area to be very concerned about.
Nevertheless, I will follow developments around this with interest.
Hi John ,I support this ,I wish you luck, our houses should not be sold, I will contribute .
Thanks for all your work.
Shame on IHC, too. They need to be exposed for the nasty right-wing corporate raiders that they are. People need to stop giving to this evil charity.