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Stocktake of NZ housing
An independent stocktake of New Zealand’s housing sector has found the housing crisis is deeper and more entrenched than previously revealed.
COMMISSIONED BY Housing and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford, A stocktake of New Zealand’s housing assesses the entire housing continuum from home- ownership and market renting to state housing and homelessness and the social cost of substandard housing.
Sobering picture
‘It paints a sobering picture of the devastating impacts of the housing crisis, particularly on children,’ says Phil Twyford. ‘Homelessness, transience and substandard housing have had a lasting, and sometimes even deadly, e ect on our youngest.
‘The stocktake highlights the increasing number of elderly facing housing-related poverty because fewer and fewer are mortgage-free and able to survive on superannuation alone.
‘Most concerning is the hidden homeless – those who feel they can’t seek government housing support for their families – for which there are no o cial estimates. The stocktake suggests there could be signi cant numbers of oating homeless, which will lead to a growing homeless rate as more people seek help.
‘The stocktake says New Zealand is quickly becoming a society divided by the ownership of housing and its related wealth and found recent housing and tax policy settings appear to have exacerbated this division.
The stocktake warns of the impact of the housing crisis on children.
‘The government is committed to address- ing this inequality. Fixing the housing crisis will take bold action. The government has a signi cant work programme to respond to these failures – implementing KiwiBuild, improving conditions for renters, increasing the supply of public housing and rebalancing tax settings to discourage speculation.’
The stocktake’s authors were Otago University Public Health Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman, economist Shamubeel Eaqub and Alan Johnson of the Salvation Army.
Dissenting voices
Shamubeel thinks the government’s Kiwi- Build policy doesn’t go far enough. ‘My
ambition would be to build 500,000 houses, not 100,000. I think we’re lacking ambition. If you look at the rate of build we’ve had since the 1980s, it has been too low and too slow.’
National’s housing spokesperson Michael Woodhouse says the report is a succinct summary of the market, but he questions some of its conclusions.
‘Disappointingly, it not only doesn’t o er anything new to the discourse, but it actually highlights where the present government is working against the sort of solutions that could ease the problem that they identify. That includes slowing down the Special Housing Areas and Māori land reforms.’
For more To download a copy of the report, visit https://tinyurl.com/yd392pq9
8 — April/May 2018 — Build 165