The hidden cost to children of the housing crisis
Last weekend’s New Zealand Housing Summit was an eye-opener to the heavy, hidden cost to our children of the housing crisis for low-income families.
Dr Innes Asher of Starship Children’s Hospital spoke of the 40,000 children admitted to hospital each year with lung infections with 10,000 of these directly attributable to poor housing. Typically 11 or 12 of these children die each year with children in low-income areas facing 12 times the risk of other children.
Two-year-old Emma-Lita Bourne never got the chance at life. She died in August 2014 and the coroner attributed her death in part to her family’s cold, damp, Housing New Zealand home in Otara. Any Housing Minister worth their salt would have resigned but no such accountability these days. No-one resigned, no-one was fired and the housing crisis rolls on over the dead bodies of our infants.
Lung problems caused and/or exacerbated by cold, damp, mouldy housing include pneumonia, asthma and bronchiectasis which causes permanent scaring of the lung tissue in young children. Half of the most affected children have 50% of their lungs destroyed before they even get to school.
Because they are over-represented in low-income statistics Maori and Pasifika children are disproportionately affected with Pasifika children at the highest risk.
Manurewa East School Principal Phil Palfrey pointed to the educational impacts of poor housing. Of the 385 children who started this year at his school, 54 have left so far (and another 50 or so have enrolled!) with 25 of these changing schools directly because of the housing crisis. Families unable to pay the rent, unable to remain in an overcrowded home, unable to get housing help from government agencies. They are trapped in a poverty cycle of low pay, insecure hours of work and high rents.
He spoke of one family living close to the school who finally had to leave after they faced rent increases every six months until they were paying $540 per week for a basic three-bedroomed home.
Children pay a heavy price.
Typically six months progress is lost every time a child changes school. Phil Palfrey spoke of an eight year old who had changed school eight times and a six year old who had changed school five times.
The Summit identified the solutions to the crisis for our kids and low-income families. Any government worth its salt would make these policy changes its top priority.
1. That this Summit condemns government housing policies because they will make the situation worse for low and middle-income families.
2. The Summit calls on the government to:
· Stop the sale or transfer of state homes
· Build more State homes without displacement of existing tenants
· Create a Bill of Rights for all tenants which includes
o Ensuring tenure and the end of 90 day evictions
o A warrant of fitness for all rentals without displacement of tenants
o Rent controls
3. This Summit calls on the companies and organisations shortlisted by the government to purchase State homes to abandon plans to support the privatisation of State homes.
4. That this Summit calls for all groups concerned about the housing crisis for low and middle income New Zealanders to work together on a multi-pronged campaign to stop the privatisation of State housing and demand the building of quality affordable housing for all New Zealanders.
John: paying the rent is just part of the hassle.
There’s supposed to be a barely-there inflation rate. (0.4 or similar) – yet the price of petrol/transport, and electricity keep inching up.
Getting in the shopping when ‘the shops’ are only accessible to people with vehicles, or who can afford bus fares, is another big hassle. Try getting through the weekly shop when you have sniffly littlies and a long hike home… It’s hard.
Buying from the trucks is another part of the problem, and the payday lenders. It’s legitimate business – unfortunately. Like leeches on the pay.
Lots of us were brought up in cold damp no-carpet houses, ice on the inside of the windows in winter. Lots of us ended up with similar health issues, too. But, if someone was in work, then food was affordable and the power bill didn’t terrify.
More than simply ‘rent’ and ‘housing’. Affordable services, plain food, and transport. Affordable power bills. Fix the weirdity of the current monetary system that is driving the creation of so much of this misery.
Collect the cats and start herding…:-)
Andrew Little, are you listening?
There’s no shame in stealing Mana’s policies…and you know, returning to Labour’s roots. I’d probably vote Labour if you did:
Stop the sale of state houses and eviction of tenants and instead build 10,000 new state homes per year for rent (or rent-to-own) until the current crisis in rental availability for people and families on low incomes is addressed. This will also create jobs and training opportunities.
Maintain income related rents at no more than 25% of income for state, local government, and community and iwi social housing, and develop an income rent control system for use in the private sector.
Put state housing back under the management of HNZ rather than MSD.
Introduce a ‘warrant of fitness’ for all rental housing, to ensure no accommodation is let without basic standards being met, including sanitation, insulation, warmth, fire safety, and the removal of any toxic materials.
Reinstate tenure for families in state homes so they can’t simply be reviewed out of their homes by governments wanting to reduce state house numbers.
http://web.archive.org/web/20150113214236/http://mana.net.nz/policy/policy-housing/
All good and valid demands, that I read above, and yes, it is appalling what goes on, and the costs mentioned are just some of the total costs. Think of the economic costs of over-priced housing, where people pay enormous amounts to the banks in interest each year, for overpriced homes like here in Auckland, due to prices pushed up by the demand from “investors”, speculators, well heeled new migrants and some offshore buyers.
But watching Q+A today, where Corin Dann asked the PM some good and hard questions, the government and Key are not going to change anything much at all, and will leave it to “the market” to address. The very same “market” that has failed for many years now.
An economist reckons the interest of buyers, for instance from Mainland China, will not get less, it will continue and grow, where those that have some cash to spend will do all they can to buy homes here.
Key thinks, they are virtually all just residents living here, but I know full well, that some find ways to “invest” in homes and in some small “business” that is used as a front to get permanent residence. The money is there, there is interest in places like China, other Asian countries, in the UK, South Africa and so forth, in getting residential homes in Auckland.
Key knows the economy is not doing well, so he wants to continue to allow the flow of migrants and cash into the country, no matter what, get more tourists, more students to study here, as milk powder just does not earn that much anymore.
We need a change of government, we can make all kinds of demands, if the government does not change, nothing much will change.
Good article John.
What we need is a government with moral clarity and the political will to act on it.
Sorry, but this is not the country our soldiers fought for. Shame on National and Labour for letting our children suffer. Sort it out!
I know someone who house sits. He has regular sits and good recommendations. Every house sit he has done recently in Auckland has had an empty house next door or a few doors away. One house owned by a Chinese woman has been empty for fifteen years. Sometimes boxes are stored in it.
As G. Morgan pointed out recently there is no point these days, in letting houses to messy families. Domestic shelter is now, globally, no more than another casino or a money laundering sphere for the soul dead.
It is possible thouigh, to find out addresses of unoccupied dwellings. Concerned citizens could also start monitering these and post such addresses on a web site along with any other observations.
Whatever else is done, and there is lots that does, there are things that have happened that will be difficult now to reverse, and I’m speaking mostly to all the people who now will never have the opportunity to own a house, the boat has sailed for them. I want our tenancy laws shredded and rewritten more to resemble those in Europe where security of tenure is a given. Even people who must rent need to be able to create a home where they live and I reckon a lot of the problems we have with people not having a stake anywhere has contributed to much of the breakdown of society we have seen in recent years. I am very definite about that and am seeking the political party that will take this on.
Make letting fees illegal.
It is unethical to take money from the landlord and the tenant for the same service, namely showing the property and performing a background check.
wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of the current government before they sell anything and everything to their rich mates