Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, December 2nd, 2014 - 6 comments
The second annual Child Poverty Monitor was released today. bsprout on Local Bodies on poverty and inequalities in Invercargill, “provides a good snapshot of New Zealand society”.
Written By: - Date published: 8:26 am, November 28th, 2014 - 12 comments
Kevin Hague says, the government’s plan to replace state housing with “social housing” will make the affordable housing crisis worse & is “economically reckless”. The Labour Party have circulated a petition to save state houses from being sold by the NZ government.
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, November 16th, 2014 - 20 comments
Hamilton City Council currently has plans to sell of its remaining pensioner housing stock. It already sold off a block of them in 2012. Of those sold, only 12 out of 53 units are available for seniors to rent at affordable rates. This is because 27 were sold as there was no social service provider able to buy them. So now Council want to sell the rest.
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, November 14th, 2014 - 45 comments
On Monday Bill English reckoned that pressures in the property market were “easing”. Yesterday’s headline “Spring house price surge in October”…
Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, November 12th, 2014 - 46 comments
Is Key planning to flog off state houses at half price to a liquor company?
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, November 9th, 2014 - 79 comments
Fifty year mortgages are here, and as usual the game is rigged against the ordinary buyer. Madness.
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, November 5th, 2014 - 11 comments
John Key’s latest answer to the housing crisis: bigger subsidies for private landlords! Subsidies to private landlords simply result in rent increases. It doesn’t increase the housing supply. But ole JK just likes screwing over young first home buyers..
Written By: - Date published: 7:43 am, November 5th, 2014 - 30 comments
National’s sale of state housing assets and other aspects of housing policy is stupid at all levels. Which is probably why they are confused themselves about it.
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 pm, November 3rd, 2014 - 34 comments
Prime Minister John Key, in his capacity as Prime Minister, promised no asset sales this term in the run up to the last election. But now they are selling assets – state houses.
Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, November 1st, 2014 - 78 comments
Paula Bennett thinks that selling off much of the country’s housing stock is exciting and sexy and that the market and a group of charities will be able to resolve the country’s housing issues.
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, October 28th, 2014 - 133 comments
In its first term, National was very careful to be incremental – Key hung to the middle, chipping away carefully at workers’ rights without doing anything dramatic. Having gained the public’s trust by continuing (outside the House) to be a clown they’d like to have a drink with, they went with one big hit with […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, October 21st, 2014 - 25 comments
A year ago National rammed through special housing areas promising 9000 homes consented in the first year under it. Over the last year they have managed to build 5 and consented 294. Nick Smith fails maths yet again. This year 13,000 – yeah right!
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, October 18th, 2014 - 75 comments
There’s no point in state houses. Not according to the Nats anyway. Unbelievable.
Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, October 14th, 2014 - 23 comments
The “Kiwi dream” is over – the housing crisis just gets worse and worse.
Written By: - Date published: 8:06 am, October 8th, 2014 - 36 comments
Good news citizens! The National government has revealed unto us today the cause of poverty and inequality.
Written By: - Date published: 7:12 pm, October 7th, 2014 - 32 comments
Remember National’s social housing policy? The one they campaigned on? The one that talked about how much money they were spending and was all about upgrading and investing in state houses? Somehow, post-election, its transmogrified into selling off a third of the state housing stock. John Key lying to voters as usual eh?
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, October 5th, 2014 - 137 comments
There’s something obscene about the way the economic story gets framed: the figures on a page, the points on an index, the number of dollars someone can swap for a number of different-coloured dollars, when people are suffering.
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, October 4th, 2014 - 47 comments
Rental housing remains unaffordable for many. The problem is the greed of investors & speculators, supported by a culture in which housing investment is seen as a way to individual prosperity.
Written By: - Date published: 4:52 pm, August 27th, 2014 - 48 comments
Andrea Vance has a weird attack piece on Cunliffe where she accuses him of not being hungry, not being able to offer instant affordable houses to everybody, not standing in the right place, and even sleeping.
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, August 26th, 2014 - 7 comments
So National are both so out of ideas and so desperate to take the spotlight off their Dirty Politics that they’re now promising tax cuts. Tax cuts straight after we have a panel of our most prominent economists warning that the ‘rock star’ economy is going to hit the rocks.
Written By: - Date published: 12:11 pm, August 25th, 2014 - 14 comments
National’s own fine print takes us from “you can get up to $20,000!” to, at best, “11% of qualifying couples get up to $20,000.” Ouch…. Typical National. Long on glitz. Long on smoke. Long on mirrors. Short on actually helping people.
Written By: - Date published: 4:03 pm, August 24th, 2014 - 65 comments
National has announced its housing policy using Labour’s Kiwisaver scheme to provide extra money to first home buyers. But the policy will only add to housing inflation instead of addressing it.
Written By: - Date published: 4:51 pm, July 29th, 2014 - 12 comments
Throughout the last few years Brownlee has consistently denied that there is a housing crisis, despite almost every sign pointing to one. What we need in Christchurch is more houses, now. Affordable, well-designed, well-insulated houses. Lots of them. This is why Labour’s Kiwibuild scheme will roll out 10,000 houses in Christchurch in the first 4 years.
Written By: - Date published: 3:33 pm, July 10th, 2014 - 47 comments
Rob Salmond has been looking through the newly released Ministry of Social Development’s Household Incomes Report. It really is invaluable.
Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, June 28th, 2014 - 5 comments
Labour has announced another part of its package to fix Christchurch: an immediate crash home-building plan. The market has failed, so the government has to step in. Its that simple. As for why the market has failed, there’s the ongoing insurance problems of course, but perhaps this also has something to do with it. Living costs in ChCh are exceeding wages and the construction industry is pocketing the difference. Labour is also changing the rules about exploiting overseas labour.
Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, June 17th, 2014 - 86 comments
We allow new candidates for left parties to post here, usually just as guest posts because they aren’t bloggers (and unused to the medium). However James Dann from the blog Rebuilding Christchurch has been writing some excellent posts about that city and its travails during the rebuild. So we’ve decided to give him a author login because for years we have been longing for a author who is in and who writes about Christchurch.
Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, June 13th, 2014 - 40 comments
Rob Salmond at Polity on what has landed in his mail box paid for by your GST and also close to the wrong side the permissible limits of Parliamentary Services funds. Or perhaps this is something for “NZ Taxpayers Union” to moan about wasting taxpayers money with. They won’t of course because they seem to be good little front organisation for Act and Jordan Williams appears to have about as much independence as their beloved slaves. But if you received one, then a complaint seems in order.
Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, May 28th, 2014 - 41 comments
The national median house price is $415,000, a figure skewed substantially upwards by the extraordinary cost of housing in Auckland. But you can buy a three bedroom house a for a lot less outside the urban areas. There just aren’t jobs to go with them. The chart shows income and employment growth by region. The growth is just not there. Correct that, and it might correct the supply in the urban centres.
Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, May 27th, 2014 - 23 comments
It appears that David Farrar, paid rubber mouthpiece for the National party, is exercising his right to be a hypocrite again. Surely he remembers his attitudes back in 2012 when he was acting as their mouthpiece to discourage other economic migrants seeking a better life in NZ? And it looks like Key is parroting the message tested at Kiwiblog… How predictable.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, May 24th, 2014 - 30 comments
Al Jazeera reports on damaging inequalities in Spain under “austerity”. High unemployment; 30% of children in poverty, political corruption, tax evasion & a focus on football. Suggested ways to decrease income & wealth inequalities in NZ. Update: TV3’s The Nation: inequality & Wilson & Pickett interview.
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, May 21st, 2014 - 99 comments
Jono at Occasionally Erudite has this advice to offer the strategy team at Labour. Make sure pushing of theme(s) this election doesn’t get snagged into the irrelevant that doesn’t have much to do with it. For instance “…are people currently earning minimum wage really likely to be even close to getting into the Auckland, Christchurch or Wellington housing markets?”
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