Tama Potaka’s magical homeless children wand

Critics doubt govt claims 1000 children now in homes, not emergency housing

Getting more than 1000 children into homes and out of motels is just the start of drastically reducing emergency housing, the government says.

But a housing advocate said cutting down on emergency housing simply means more families homeless and living out of cars, and the Labour Party said the government was making it harder for families in need to access emergency housing.

Associate Minister of Housing Tama Potaka says new figures show a 32 percent reduction in the number of families living in motels. And that more than 1000 children had been rehoused in homes by Kainga Ora or community organisations since the government came to power.

OH COME ON!

BULL-SHIT!

This Government excels at camouflaging social carnage and selling that shit sandwich to us as a Parisian Pastry.

They moved the Child Stats up to accommodate for their borrowed Tax Cuts and had the balls to describe lifting the poverty stats by 17 000 was because it was ‘achievable‘

They manufactured a crisis by purposely underfunding Public Health and then overthrew the old Board to put in place a Chainsaw.

And now we have Associate Minister of Housing Tama Potaka claiming to have magically waved his Homeless Children Wand and magically 1000 children aren’t in emergency housing.

Really?

1000 kids hu?

In a month?

Ok Sportsfan, where are they?

He doesn’t know.

He. Doesn’t. Know.

Ok, we’ve moved these people out of emergency housing in Motels, which we all agree without the right wrap around services became social sores and weeping wounds of community damage – (which however is a reflection of the underfunded welfare state and true level of depredation in NZs underclass), and where have we put them then?

I ask because forgive me, but this Government have stopped building social housing, so if the answer is blithely, ‘Social Housing’, I’d like to know where the living Christ that’s supposed to come from…

“There is a pause on new developments whilst we wait for the turnaround plans to be presented back to the ministers from the Kainga Ora board.

“But I have no doubt in my mind there is a lot of mahi that needs to be done in order to get that turnaround plan presented.”

…Oh God it’s worse than I thought, he’s admitting they don’t even have a plan for where they are dumping all these families into.

No one believes these numbers, surely the more likely explanation for this sudden drop is that National tightened the eligibility rules and thus dumped a whole lot of people into a void of homelessness…

Last week, Murray told RNZ people in emergency housing had reported they were living in fear of eviction because of anticipated ‘tough’ new rules for people using the service.

While the Community Law organisation said it had advised the Ministry of Social Development to expect an increase homelessness if new rules were introduced which it believed were vulnerable to being used subjectively.

Earlier figures showed that about 4300 people – half of whom were children – were in emergency housing in June, with much of that in motels, but within the month grants for emergency housing took a sudden drop by $7 million.

Labour Party housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said the reduction in the number of people in emergency housing was because it had been made too hard for families to access when they need it.

“Make it harder for people to get into emergency housing – where are they going to go? They’re certainly not going to the houses that the government are building, because the government put a stop to it.

“They’re either going to go into cars, which was why emergency housing was created in the first place, or they’re going to go and stay with family in overcrowded conditions.

“They’ll be able to reach that 75 percent because they’re not letting people in. It’s unhealthy and unsafe, the only real honest way to reduce demand is by funding social housing.”

More questions needed to be asked about where people do go instead, McAnulty said.

This is like Chris Bishop crowing how many Kāinga Ora state tenants he had kicked out but then couldn’t tell anyone where they had gone.

All National are doing is pushing up the homelessness and desperation out there during a cost of living crisis.

So this is social policy now is it?

Draconian eligibility welfare changes that then make the statistics look good but don’t actually explain the social carnage this policy is creating in our Communities, other than building a Mega Prison for the wave of poverty crime about to hit NZ as this Government throws 50 000 people off Welfare as the Reserve Bank Governor is crashing the economy and spiking unemployment which is hurting young Māori the worst.

Meanwhile Big Tobacco, Trans National Mining and the Real Estate Pimps all get juicy tax loop holes funded by the poorest amongst us.

That is the insult to injury of this appalling social policy.

Where is the leadership and decency within NZ to stand against this fucking abomination!