How tiny is Poto Williams table & why a nationwide rent strike is the only solution?

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How tiny is Poto Williams table for renters? When it was property speculators, Labour went out and bought them a new table, lounge suit and 3 houses.

When it’s renters, they can go fuck themselves.

Last month Matthew Hooton tweeted a graph showing NZ with the highest level of house price inflation with the following message, ‘why I’m voting Labour’…

…last week Damien Grant did the same…

…when the Darth Vader Twins of the NZ right are cheering your housing policy, something has gone horribly wrong.

Grant Robertson should get a knighthood for services to property speculators.

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To stave off an economic stampede as Covid broke out, the Government pumped billions into the banks who in turn used that to spark a speculative gold rush that will crucify renters once Adrian Orr has to raise mortgage rates.

Mortgage rates that the Megalandlord scum class will push straight onto their tenants!

The landlord class have a vast power over the renter class who have bugger all!

Surely an explosion of food inflation and oppressive rent hikes must be met with militancy!

A nationwide rent strike with clear instructions to the landlords to get the rent paid by Labour would terrify this nation of property speculators and their political handlers.

Burning down ghost houses should be next.

Previously renter militancy couldn’t be collectively harvested to be effective but social media can do that and so much more!

The politicians, landlords and banks have rigged the game for themselves – if we enter a winter of discontent from greedy landlords raising rents, we should strike back on the place that hurts them most, their wallets and their precious assets!

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: I have no issue with people who own their own home, or have a batch or even a 3rd property to provide income into your retirement. What I have no time for is people who own 4 properties, 5 properties, 10 properties, 20 properties, 80 properties. 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.

That’s ‘neokindness’.

A rent strike would force Labour to do something more meaningful than tilting their head to one side and nodding sadly!

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37 COMMENTS

  1. 4 years of this Labour government says, actually it screams, they ain’t interested in doing a damned thing about the housing market especially for those not in it already other than ensuring prices keep rising.

    Isn’t that why we have motels?

    Isn’t that what cars are for?

    • And the prissy bureaucrats and planners who have jobs to do, climate change goals to meet, and salaries to collect also steps up the promotion ladder to prepare for, are cancelling out parking places for cars, also not demanding on new builds, parking places, garages etc. They want us all to cycle in the rain and wind with lack of protection against trucks, mad or careless motorists, and no doubt carry our children on our backs like spiders. They are charging parking fines that would buy almost a week’s meals for a couple.

      These managers of society have no bloody interest in people just their beautiful plans and models all in lovely colours with the sun shining on perfect spaces and buildings. Let them go and live in computer land, like in the Truman Show – roll up, roll up and step behind the screen – you jerks.

      • No doubt @GW, they have a spreadsheet JUST for you.
        But you’d have to agree, the BS is wearing thin, and they’ll more than likely be left wondering ‘What did I do”.
        Btw: Do you still visit that site that’s managed by the world’s best programmer who has all the creds to justify his claims to fame? The one where some of the moderators are yet to work out their arse from their elbow and who’re prepared to cancel people that relate to politicians telling first hand what they think, but who they don’t agree with, or who strive to be offended on their behalf.
        I’m preying for another Singapore contract for their most gorgeous – in fact I could probably put my people in touch with his people in that space going forward. In the fullness of time of course.

        • OwR You are so obscure that you almost blend into the background like in a Gary Larson cartoon. I do go there sometimes when I have some environmental stuff that interests me and is likely to do also with their participants. Also to read Robert G the bright light who leads the way to a greener and more pleasant land.

          And I think highly of the great programmer who does what he does so faithfully – remembering that he has had heart problems etc – and his posts and comments are always interesting and often very forthright, or full of special knowledge and understanding that he has from his university study. Good to see you keeping on, things must get aired, and I think TDB has good limits and this blog woud be one of the eminient open ones in NZ. Though I think there are others that I should look at. Bowalley I do, do you look at Bryan Gould’s – he is conservative and thoughtful – long time involved so good on historical background I think?

  2. The first thing that should happen is that Megan Woods should be returned to the back benches, and someone with some idea of how to build houses is put in her place. Why she’s been allowed to be so ineffectual for so long beats me.

  3. LOL. The poor man’s Gordon Brown vanity got us in this situation. He didn’t want to look like the economic numpty he is therefore him and Orr concocted the most expensive can kicking exercise in NZ’s history and pumped up domestic inflation fueled by cheap debt.

    Winter is coming due to the lunacy of these two. Extra $8,000 per annum for a $400,000 mortgage when people’s cost of living is already skyrocketing will go down like a cup of cold sick.

    • “The poor man’s Gordon Brown vanity got us in this situation. He didn’t want to look like the economic numpty he is therefore him (sic) and Orr concocted the most expensive can kicking exercise in NZ’s history and pumped up domestic inflation fueled by cheap debt.”

      The problem lies not with the government, but with the banking system. We need to stop the banks creating money out of nothing, and set up a new state owned “State Advances Corporation” to lend money for housing purposes.

  4. Poto Williams…hahahaha…I don’t know what she has over Jacinda or Grant to even get a minister job. If there was ever a most useless minister, she’s the one.

    • Poto, that stereotypical grey senior civil servant, the kind who lands an exec position in a ministry without knowing anything about the position and those beneath wonder how on Gods green earth that happened and once she’s found out, she moves on and gets another similar role in another ministry, not knowing what she’s doing. And on it goes.

      • I would quote ‘the peter principle’ but I don’t think there’s a rung low enough on the ladder that would be suitably untaxing.

    • Jeremy,

      The current Labour Party Ministers didn’t cause the housing debacle. One of the main reasons they got into Government was their plan to solve the debacle. They then stood around like headless chickens while things got even worse. On Housing, Labour and National are as useless as each other.

        • Yes but National campaigned on ” a brighter future ” . The past was their issue, they fucked up all future hope we had.

      • Bollocks – they caused the current debacle. All that cash just dumped into NZ by their Chief Idiot Orr.

        Sure, the pandemic required a response but what they did was lazy, short sighted and they are entirely, 100% responsible for the utterly insane increases we’ve seen over the past two years.

        They are economically illiterate and I think blind to the brutal damage they’ve crashed into the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us.

        I’d expect this kind of callous inhuman disregard for society from some nut job Republican clinging to his guns in Florida, not from the former leader of the Socialist Youth

    • There is no doubt that National willfully and opened our housing market to every property speculator in the world who was awash with money. A lazy way of stimulating an economy if ever there was one,
      Key spent his whole life looking for a fast buck at the expense of someone else and i would guess that his favourite bed-time reading would have been the deeply profound ” The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches”.
      Neither he nor English had a fucking clue, so he just opened up as many gates as possible to allow the Chinese and Indian speculators to run riot and at the same time rapidly ramped up immigration to unsustainable levels and damn the consequences.
      Paula Bennett had “no idea” that one park alone in South Auckland has 300 cars a night parked up with the working homeless.
      Right there is a supertanker full of dynamite heading for disaster. National were, and still are, a combination of bullshitary, fucking hopelessness and criminality.
      Labour should have been a lot more decisive and acted immediately on the housing front. All this nonsense about the housing market mustn’t be allowed to fall . Like any ‘market’. If it’s overvalued it falls . You artificially prop ‘markets’ up at your peril.
      A massive government run house building scheme was the answer building very simple, but sound, Keith Hay type homes in 5 main areas throughout N.Z. No greedy real estate agents involved clipping the ticket for ridiculous sums of money. Government built . Government controlled.
      It was the only answer, and if house prices dropped …..too bad. That is the banks’ fault for being greedy and not doing their homework.
      You need to really care, and have some balls, to do that . Wasn’t there. But National would be worse. That’s the problem facing New Zealand!! What a shambles !!!

  5. Housing is clearly this Governments biggest failure.

    How can a Government that cares about people sit back and watch this all unfold…..and do SFA?

    How can any NZ Government allow and even encourage the most diabolical inequity I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime? Even Blind Freddy can see it FFS.

    How can this Government allow the hopes of a generation of young Kiwi families to own their own home be flushed down the shitter a bit more every month….and do SFA?

    The PM has walked a tight rope. She doesn’t want house prices to fall because of the implications but wants housing to be affordable. She’s paralyzed and stuck in no man’s land….and it shows month after month after month.

    I’m convinced based on all the evidence I see that this Government is out of its depth. The problem is way too big and their ineffective perfunctory answers are way too small.

    Ask yourself these questions.

    If you really took the housing debacle seriously, would you appoint the clueless and inept Phil Twyford as the Minister of Housing?

    If your fantasy housing plan was brutally exposed to the point it was a deserved and constant source of ridicule that required a “reset”, would you then replace the inept Phil Twyford with the morbidly obese and equally inept Megan Woods?

    It saddens me immensely to say that on housing the Ardern Government have stumbled around like blind turtles stuck in a maze. I’ve seen absolutely zero evidence to suggest anything from them other than more of the same.

    • “If your fantasy housing plan was brutally exposed to the point it was a deserved and constant source of ridicule that required a “reset”, would you then replace the inept Phil Twyford with the morbidly obese and equally inept Megan Woods?”

      What makes you think that Twyford and Woods are inept? What makes you think Nicola Willis would do any better? What makes you think that the problem is even soluble? I would suggest that, instead of ranting, you might start living up to your pseudonym. You could start by asking whether there some way of stopping the banks pouring money into the housing market.

  6. the situation is catastrophic but what sticks in my craw is, when it goes arse up as it must, the cries for bailout from speculators will be deafening and any govt that can’t stand up to a grandstanding journalist karen will fold like a cheap suit….and the poor we’ve already paid once in rent will be told they have to bail out their landlords overleveraged rat holes….yay NZ punching above our weight.

  7. So easy to fix the housing situation
    -graduated stamp duties ,primary home exempt-investors disincentivised

    -levy on homes empty for 6 months or more without compelling reason
    -soft loans for 1st home buyers…10 year moratorium on selling without penalty

    NZ=highest house prices in the world
    NZ=highest rents in the world

    Govt enthrall to banks and the FIRE economy=hopeless.

  8. This is all just so funny – the cost of housing in NZ has nothing to do with those so called scum lords it’s mostly an issue of supply.

    After the earthquake in Christchurch they had a massive building program after releasing huge areas of land upon which to build and wouldn’t you know it, prices flat lined…

    Blame landlords, Labour or whoever but it’s pointless.

    The system is broken, councils are incentivised to not release land as they can’t afford the infrastructure (to many lefties spending money on rainbow crossings and cycle paths) so the put in Urban Limits and block development any which way they can.

    If labour wanted to do something they should just compulsory purchase all the land between Albany and Warkworth. Put in the infrastructure to open it up and then watch the value of building land collapse.

    This will never happen though as those Chardonnay Socialists think we all need to live in dinky little flats like those wonderful Scandinavians do. That and they couldn’t run a bath without a committee, 7 working groups and at least 24 huis across the nation.

    • Didn’t see Key ,English or Joyce take up any of your ideas either. I think the conservative media interviewing their typewriters would call that ‘nanny state’.
      Better off thinking like a Nat. and just fly plane loads of Chinese in on $5.00 per hour and build them out of bamboo using the Alibaba kit-set house spec. sheet which you can buy at the $2.00 shop for… $1.00…. job done….

      • ohhh grant we’re back to chinese crap…how outdated unoriginal and inaccurate you are,
        do research before purchase all companies everywhere on the planet have different standards ‘the west’ is no longer top notch in all fields..
        .sorry to be the one to break that too you…
        .if you buy a good product it doesn’t matter where it comes from….
        mind you if your only experience is cheap shit red shed wheelbarrows, but that’s endemic kiwi cheapskate option coming into play.

        • Oh really…you want to see the cheap eyesore cheap rubbish they are building in our street at the moment… i’ve seen cardboard coffins designed better…
          only had to phone the council 5 times so far to have changes made in relation to to the footings, height in relation to boundary, uncertified materials being used,
          incorrect steel placement on major fire walls, major mistakes with retain wall construction and in sufficient drainage etc… not to mention overall workmanship..
          I asked to see all their LBP licences.. “See boss” was the only english they seemed to know….I phoned the ” the boss” and apparently they have one of their pet engineer’s signing it all off .
          I arranged for a site meeting with him…he turned up but had very limited knowledge on some of the critical junction flashing details and they were not on his working drawings either.
          The site continually resembles a bombsite. it is unbelievable that they can get away with this shit!!
          Don’t tell me they are world class… nothing could be further from the truth!!

    • You’re right Yeti, so much open green unbuilt land near Albany. If say, people could build a house wherever they wanted there, the land price factor would be like in Texas, low, and house would be much cheaper.
      But that wouldn’t suit the greens and others would it?
      They want high density corridors alongside train tracks.

  9. so landlords and their ‘agents’ don’t hike rents then? is that what you’re trying to say yeti, they borrowed cheap money for loans they can’t service (the banks own fault…stand up GFC MK2) and expect not only their tenants to pay their mortgages but fund their next acquisition they can’t afford too.

    • If they borrowed money they can’t afford to pay then both the banks and the borrowers should lose their respective shirts.

      I’m not saying anything like you’ve suggested though. All I have tried to say is that it is because of successive governments from either side of politics have failed to fix the simple problem of land costing too much.

      They are all terrified of upsetting exisiting home owners so they won’t do what’s needed.

      Look at the cost of a 500m square section in Auckland – it’s insane.

      Fix that and you fix the problem

  10. Poto probably needs re-educating? People can’t live in a consent not can they live in poverty.

    Labour have to go! They’re waaaay out of their depth in Crisis.
    So far, they’ve managed to fuck every single Crisis up as well at the same time, start new ones!

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