Maori Party Co-Leader, Marama Fox, is playing hardball over Nick Smith latest attempts to weasel out of commitments on the deeply flawed RMA changes that National has spent the last few years trying to find any support for in Parliament. The bill is crap. The Maori party should just drop it regardless how many baubles they think they will get from it.
“And when I saw that article in the NZ Herald this morning , in light of whats been happening to so many New Zealander family’s having to sleep in cars and the like over the past few years – I thought ”FUCK IT !!”… Im going to say something.”
A recent UN report highlights the waste of treating homes as commodities. It should sound awfully familiar in the NZ context.
In every case a failure to plan, a failure to deliver, and a glib attempt to fob off the victims of his government’s failure.
Radio New Zealand has reported on a review of the Government’s housing policy which described it as fragmented and lacking a robust plan but it took intervention by the Ombudsman to have the review released.
Two very contrasting opinion pieces on racism, housing, jobs, and the immigration debate.
Bill blames the blowout in emergency housing grants on the “hidden homeless”. Hidden only from those who will not see. Hidden only from a government that deliberately chooses for political reasons not to collect the relevant data.
The Government’s estimate of the extent of the housing crisis has recently been shown to be totally out of touch and to add further pathos it is counting kiwi families urgently housed in motels in tourism statistics.
I’m used to hearing some pretty pathetic excuses out of the National government. But this will really take some beating.
Being tenants in our own country is starting to look like the good old days.
This is what you get with a hasty, reactive, “top down” policy process.
We should probably just schedule this as a monthly post.
Andrew Little’s announcement yesterday in Gisborne of Labour’s pledge of up to $20million to build a prefabricated timber plant there is a much-needed boost to the area and a sign that Labour’s 100,000 new house pledge first made by David Shearer in 2012 has legs.
Time to take action against the destruction of communities and privatisation of social housing.
In the middle of a housing crisis “Housing New Zealand documents obtained under the Official Information Act show that there are nearly 2,500 empty state houses, more than 500 of which have been empty for over a year.”
If Auckland as a city wish to retain representative samples of our past, then we should concentrate on how to preserve those rather than trying to deny the migration that increases its population by something like 50 thousand people per year. This is a working city – not a museum.
English is a less convincing liar than Key.
With this vicious infighting exposed the government is clearly in total disarray.
“The absence of any meaningful progress in reducing child poverty rates over the past decade—and the lack of interest by Government in using welfare and income support programmes to do so—points to wilful indifference toward the long-term personal and social impacts of this avoidable harm.”
All this housing malarkey…are we over it yet?
“These are the people’s assets” – Ioela ‘Niki’ Rauti.
State houses are being given to developers, and people are being evicted from their homes.
A rich old white idiot, who would only be amused at our anger, has vented about the homeless, in a piece that shouldn’t be rewarded with our clicks.
The lighthouse is a piece of public art recently erected in downtown Auckland. It is to celebrate the institution of the State House and has been paid for by real estate barons.
Already sky-high Auckland rents are set to rise further.
Rudman: “The Prime Minister, in his role in charge of Housing New Zealand, and Smith have spectacularly failed to solve Auckland’s housing crisis over several years.”
Apparently it’s “getting homeless people into homes”. Given the ongoing explosion of homelessness, just think how much scope she has to make herself proud next year…
3 stories from Checkpoint yesterday that add up to a picture of National’s response to housing: waste on unacceptable temporary housing; empty state houses where they’re needed most; and vilify anyone who dares complain.
Could be that the Auckland property market is turning downwards.
Bill English and Paula Bennett won’t be thinking about it this week, but Auckland’s Housing Crisis continues to get worse.
It’s more than a “dreary lack of ambition”, it’s a deliberate plan to underfund / rundown the stock to “justify” selling off, so that the Nats can indeed “wash their hands” of their obligations.
Warnings from the government and the Reserve Bank that first home buyers are taking on too much debt. Prices are too high, wages are too low, interest rates are rising. These warnings are effectively telling the average first home buyer to give up.
Andrew Little was on RNZ this morning talking housing affordability. “The amount people are having to borrow for their first home has increased 43 percent in the last two years.”
A couple of reactions to the $100m Parliament building plans.
John Key, the state house tenant turned good who has relied heavily on his humble upbringing is overseeing the sale of the state house he grew up in.
English admits that the government has done a poor job of maintaining state houses, and uses it as an excuse for privatisation – its by design. The attempted sale in Christchurch, incuding Key’s childhood home, is a powerful symbol of the way this government likes pulling up the ladder that they used behind them.
Another fail in National’s plan to sell off state houses is good news for those of us who believe that it is the government’s responsibility to take care of society’s most vulnerable.
