Public housing waitlist hits new record of 22,803 as new builds slow in January
More than 22,800 households were waiting for public housing at the end of January, a new record as the Government struggles to deal with the surging demand for help with housing.
The newly released figure of 22,803 represents a rise of more than 7000 households from January 2020, and is more than four times the size of the list when Labour was elected in 2017.
It comes as rents continue to steadily rise across the country.
The list’s rapid growth, which has seen it reach new records every month, has slowed somewhat in recent months, after a huge jump of 1030 families between August and September 2020.
After pouring billions into the pockets of property speculators in an intellectually obscene version of trickle down, Labour are apparently surprised our house prices have exploded.
The truth (like everything else in fucking NZ), is that the under regulated free market has been warped by the wealthy for their interests and all Labour attempt is bullshit tinkering on the sides rather than challenge the dominance of neoliberal theology.
We have allowed the commodification of houses to be a means to make wealth and people are chasing that with all the nuance of meth addicts in a P lab.
If Labour wanted actual solutions, these 3 would do it.
1 – FLOOD MARKET WITH MASS STATE HOUSING REBUILD: End the scum landlord subsidy of housing allowances end putting money into the pockets of unscrupulous motel owners by rapidly building 50 000 new state homes. Scum Landlords can do as they please because the level of desperation amongst renters gives them total power. Flooding the market with 50 000 new state houses would rob scum landlords of that desperation.
2 – STATE HOUSE FOR LIFE: Allow beneficiaries to stay in their state home for life so that they can create stable communities and that their desperation is never transported back to Landlords.
3 – DEPOSIT RESTRICTIONS: First time home buys should be required to have 10% deposit, but the more properties you own, the higher the deposit. The reason the speculators can out buy any first time home owner is because they can use their multiple properties to leverage more debt. If you are a property speculator, you need to turn up with a 70% deposit to counter the leverage multiple properties allows them.
If Labour want to actually solve the problem they have to regulate the market and re-set it so that speculation is punished while first home ownership and housing of the poor is championed.
For too long we have allowed the the rich to dictate the rules, if Labour’s kindness is to be meaningful, it needs to challenge that dynamic.
Unfortunately Labour are not looking for solutions, they are looking for the pretence of a solution to ease criticism from their Left. The announcement of a war on speculators won’t fix the housing crisis (if you didn’t want a war with speculators why give them $60billion to speculate with in the first place?) but it sure does feel good hearing those Landlords scream and until Labour build more bloody State Houses, a speculating Landlords scream will have to keep many warm at night.
Luckily for Jacinda, house prices could jump 50% and as long as Labour keep the Covid virus out of the country, no one will care about housing unaffordability.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
‘The truth (like everything else in fucking NZ), is that the under regulated free market has been warped by the wealthy for their interests and all Labour attempt is bullshit tinkering on the sides rather than challenge the dominance of neoliberal theology.’
I think you mean under-regulated, Martyn.
Jacinda is fully immersed in neoliberal bullshit, so she certainly won’t challenge it. Indeed, the level of bullshit under Jacinda is just as high as under Shonkey, if not higher.
Not directly relating to this topic, but indicative of the bullshit promoted by Adern and her cronies is the Climate Commission report, presented to the public under her ‘Climate Emergency’ auspice: it consists of some valid analysis embedded in mountains of absolute bullshit and outright lies.
From the report:
‘Hydrogen production costs and transport and infrastructure requirements are unlikely to fall to the level where it is an economical fuel for heating applications in the next 15 years. 21 Beyond this, hydrogen could potentially be used for displacing or supplementing natural gas in some hard to abate sectors with high temperature requirements such as cement, lime and glass manufacturing. 22 Hydrogen heating in 18 (Lawless Geo-consulting, 2020) 19 (Hall et al., 2015) 20 (Committee on Climate Change, 2018); Industry engagement 21 (Concept Consulting, 2019) 22 (BloombergNEF, 2020)10 1 February 2021 Draft Supporting Evidence for Consultation Option Opportunities and challenges these applications is still at the research stage but has the potential to be used towards 2050. 2
From my response:
“Firstly, there are no sources of hydrogen on Earth and all hydrogen currently used is manufactured from other substances at a substantial energy loss. The easiest method for manufacturing hydrogen at scale is the partial oxidation of natural gas.
To talk of using hydrogen [made from natural gas] is absurd, and is indicative of the extraordinarily low level of understanding of the Climate Commission team -which, we note, contains no geochemists nor any industrial chemists!’
The people running the system are clueless, Martyn. And to hope they will somehow suddenly work out where they have gone wrong is wishful in the extreme.
These ‘idiots’ will continue to make everything worse until they can no longer do so because the system has collapsed, along with the energy supply and the environment.
Hear hear about Hydrogen. I’m amazed at how many people think H2 is a good idea, but have NO IDEA the EROEI calculations. Energy returned on energy invested, which is seriously MINUS i.e. 1 unit in and 0.5 units out for the best case scenario. Compare that to ‘old’ oil, which was 80-100 to 1 return. Modern ‘oil’ (i.e hard to get at and LOW quality) is 8-10 to 1.
Let alone the infrastructure costs required and the HUGE difficulties compressing a gas for transportation.
I understand Joe Public being uninformed about such things, but people paid $100’sK p.a to sit on a committee supposedly with NZ’s best interest at heart, is worrying and a sign that it’s JUST GRAVY BOATING, i.e. paying back your backers with easy money to sit on a committee where ‘they’re’ not needed or of ANY use.
‘I’m amazed at how many people think H2 is a good idea,;
Undoubtedly because they are constantly fed bullshit by the corporate media, the government, and its agencies.
We are, indeed, falling off the EROEI cliff, down from 100:1 EROEI a hundred years ago to about 10:1 now.
Once we get down to 3:1 it’s game over.
But it will almost certainly be game over long before then because prices are too low for the high-cost extraction that goes on in the western world.
Neoliberal governments will end up throwing money at practically everything (some already are) rather than admit they’ve been on the wrong track for decades.
I laughed at a few parts of the CCC’s writing on energy.
Any proposal for green hydrogen that doesn’t start with ‘Assuming almost unlimited amounts of renewable electricity at prices too low to meter’ is not worth reading.
‘electricity at prices too low to meter’ was the con the nuclear industry used in the early 1950s to get the government to subsidise the initial nuclear reactors for electricity generation in Britain.
It was really all about having reactors and separators etc. to produce nuclear weapons, of course.
And now they find that the cost of decommissioning very old reactors is greater than the entire value of the electricity generated throughout their working lives. Add to that the cost of storage of radioactive waste no one knows what to do with.
None of that stops idiots in NZ proposing nuclear as ‘the long-term solution to our energy predicament’.
I am happy to support a young family with subsidised rent to give them a good start however at some time they need to move on and support themselves . They should recieve help in family planning and financial planning so they can move on . If they want to stay in the community they should be given the oppetunity to buy the house and the money go into building more homes to keep the housing stock at a high level.
The pride of owning your own home should be the goal of all governments if that is what the family wants. Home ownership is not everyone’s goal and this is where the private market comes into play. The low cost rental market is where most of the poor landlords dwell taking advantage of the lack of axcess to better Homes.
We already have low fertility rates Trev and so does some other western nations, so we either breed or fling open the gates keeping in mind we aren’t the only ones that need people. And please don’t mention eugenics. Many families weren’t given the same opportunity to buy the state homes they lived in for twenty plus years especially the brown ones. And State housing Corporation were racist and so were the banks. So people should be able to live in the state homes providing they meet the criteria.
Those are just platitudes – Tie housing to commercial development. If you’re building a new commercial building, you need to build enough housing for the employees of said commercial building, even if you don’t demand that employees live there, or even that it is in the same price range. The market will adjust.
The Ardern Labour government is seriously starting to mirror the super impotent elected representatives of Auckland City.
Owing to the legislation that set up Auckland’s Super City bullshit, the Council Controlled Organisations throw a few crumbs to them every now and then, similarly but with no legislative power to do so, the Wellington bureaucracy do likewise anyway to Jacinda and her colleagues.
An announcement that might provideTampons in schools but probably wont. Tick.
Housing reforms to stop uncertainty for accommodation, homelessness and landlord extortion. Get the fuck out of here.
Jacinda has got to wake up and stop being grateful for going nowhere!
NZ’s version of the Clayton’s law….the Jacinda Law.
She’s looking more and more like Tony Blair; minus the mass killing of innocent people and starting unprovoked wars.
Start up ‘your’ Aotearoa Pa party Martyn, I’ll join, vote for ‘you’ and deliver leaflets (and join the local party’s board) in Kerikeri.
We need a REAL left wing party, not the present soft ShonkeyJonkey Natz party.
This country has abundant supplies of wood, makes aluminium, has no end of cheap wool (for insulation) and something precious and unique (apparently) “Kiwi Ingenuity”. Why cannot it build many computer-controlled pre-fab, eco-friendly houses as per German/Scandiwegian model? Something about the alleged Carter-Holt lack of treated building timber smacks of conspiracy to me – a spanner in the works any serious volume in house building and a gift to the ongoing speculation and rip-off rentals.
Just building housing doesn’t solve all the problems associated with this particular bit of the housing market.
For example, there are two homes for sale near me right now. One is 90,000 dollars, another is 175,000.
Both of these homes are completely destroyed, total write offs. One of them has a roof, the other is a blasted shell of a house with just the base foundation and a few walls left standing.
That is the one that is 175,000…
>_>
Welcome to the housing market folks, leave your sanity at the door.
@ Liminal…
carter holt OWN’s AO/NZ. As do fletcher challenge, watties, wrightsons and the banksters etc. We’re merely the grumpy tennants they need to work ever harder to pay for their luxury lifestyles.
Or, and on a more basic note: We’re exhausted, head-fucked suckers paying them heavily to be down trodden and exploited by them. Is profitable-irony a thing? If not, it should be.
The reason behind the stunted moustache ( roger douglas) and his funny wee men deregulating the unions back in the day was because they knew we’d eventually be in this very position. Powerless and exploited and there appears to be nothing we can do about it. Back in the day we could strike until the wee-diddles acquiesced but now-a-days we must suck up what ever the wee-diddles pull out of their trousers.
Today’s AO/NZ is a dysfunctional school yard full of bullies and chumps.
Heard of Owen Wilkes?
He became politicised in the anti-war movement, which led to invitations to work for the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. These activities led to the 1982 Wilkes/Gleditsch trial in Norway for compiling materials from open sources into materials judged to reveal national secrets.[4] Wilkes received a suspended prison sentence, as well as a fine. On his return to New Zealand from Norway after the trial, he found his Punakaiki house had been pulled down for being erected without a permit.
His house was pulled down by the Buller District Council who billed Wilkes for their dirty work.
Another fellow I know called Lindsay Newton, inventor of wool bloc insulation was preditor-price attacked by carter holt harvey for his daring to compete with chh’s fiberglass insulation cartel. The commerce commission found in favour of Lindsay Newton but nothing really changed and carter holt’s is still viewed by this writer as greedy bullies.
Three main reasons why pre-fabs are not flying out of the factories.
1) Councils don’t like them because they can’t see every step in the building process, unlike the old timber frame on a concrete slab, so they are afraid corners will be cut in the factory and they, the council, will be liable under Leaky Homes rules. (a smart government would take over that liability and have their own inspectors in the pre-fab factories to ensure standards)
2) Most people building homes want their homes to ‘express their personality and taste’ so anything pre-fab is considered a bit cheap and nasty. So it will be harder to sell when the owner wants to move up the property ladder to greater riches. Banks know this and so don’t have the same amount of enthusiasm for the mortgage.
3) the higher costs are in the land, not so much the house. So if you pay a great deal of money for the section, why put a cheap house on it when you can put an expensive house on it for just a little bit more, relatively speaking? That house will be a lot easier to get a mortgage for and to re-sell.
The people in control of this mess, like Robbo simply have no clue how hard renting is. He thinks that if rents go up because of his attack on the scumlords then renters can just pick up and move on. What he doesnt understand is since people took up their current rental their circumstances may have changed. They may be on less wages due to losing their job, they may have been ‘allowed’ a cat or god forbid a poodle, they may have had a child, they may have left their abusive partner. They are still paying the rent, even though they may personally struggle.They were able to get a rental previously because their circumstances were acceptable to the letting agent and the greedy overlord. In this ultra greedy environment with higher rents and more poor souls trying to avoid the inhumane motels set aside in Rotorua this poor renter now is not acceptable to the overlord and will be locked out of any opportunity for a hovel close to where they live and work. This situation is dreadfully cruel and Labour caused it. It makes me emotional just thinking about the plight of these people. Terribly sad.
Very good.
It certainly seems to me….
That if the government removed planning restrictions on property. ie you own you can build anything on it subject to building code, and remove the monopoly on building by building companies. ie extend last years no permit required rules on sleepouts etc. Back to owner builders(with the supervision as per last years law change)
THEN
Lots more realistically priced homes would be built.
We need short term solutions. No luvvy duvvy pie in the sky shit…
Government should fund some large scale development land and put a gazillion prefabs there and get people housed!!! I lay London to a brick that if an international company was given a contract to supply 10,000 house in a year on a Greenfields development. It would happen.
Forget about the NZ building industry, t couldn’t handle it. Beside NZ builders are flat out already
…” After pouring billions into the pockets of property speculators in an intellectually obscene version of trickle down, Labour are apparently surprised our house prices have exploded. Luckily for Jacinda, house prices could jump 50% and as long as Labour keep the Covid virus out of the country, no one will care about housing unaffordability”…
————-
Well I’m listening to Native American / American Indian music atm in the form of ;
Native American Traditional Cree Music
https://youtu.be/fcLS_oO1kro?t=11
Why?… well partially from an amateur anthropologist’s point of view, I find the fact that these cultures remained intact after so much genocide,… much like the working class of NZ,… I’d ask you to listen to the passion, a simple tom drum, and the beautiful human harmony’s,…contrast that with the shitty modern reality of neo liberal individualism, contrast that again with the human ability to overcome,…
See how they occupied Alcatraz Island in the 1970’s, see how they opposed the shitty state backed license to pollute and rape with the later Sioux oil pipe dispute. See how their returned veterans stood side by side with demonstrators, yet kept the peace and facilitated peaceful negotiations.
Can we not learn from the Native Americans???
They have been there before countless times.
They are a powerful example to us all. As are our own indigenous people, the Maoris of New Zealand, Aotearoa. Its time we listened. For those who have suffered the most, they have had to forgive the most, – despite physical and cultural genocide.
And it is not just not indigenous people who now suffer, it is all peoples because of this disgusting ideology of greed of the 1%.
It is time we overturned it.
And if that means getting rid of Labour, – and by association National, so be it.
Policy’s for the many, – not the few.
Property is not a race issue, its a class issue. If ma and pa have money they can help with a leg up onto the proper ladder, or if not willing then at least thier childs future inheritance will grow in the form of parents house. If parents simply can’t help or have no property then you can’t get on the money escalator. Ever. Neither can your children or grandchildren. This is Jacinda and Grants world
Comments are closed.