Our House.

From first-home buyers to social housing, everyone needs a home.

I'll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase
That you bought today

A warm dry home, you’d think that would be bread and butter to politicians. Home ownership and making sure people aren’t left living on the street, that’s as Kiwi as Feijoa and Apple Crumble. Isn’t it?

The coalition are very keen on helping people who own lots of houses, giving them a three billion dollar tax cut, but apparently they’re not so bothered about renters, first-home buyers, or those who need social housing.

Their Kiwi Dream is not a quarter acre section with backyard cricket, a veggie patch and a BBQ. Nor is it a starter home, a small box on a postage stamp of land, or on top of another box, that someone’s paying an eye watering sum to buy. Apparently for them it’s a large portfolio, tax free capital gains, and laws favouring landlords over tenants.

Still the following was a bit of a surprise, although it shouldn’t be by now I guess, with something different on the chopping block every other day it seems. As well as the ones in between.

In the Newshub report it says “the Government is set to scrap the $60 million given to first-home buyers in grants in next week's Budget and redirect the money to social housing.”

Housing Minister Chris Bishop was asked whether he could guarantee that this assistance to first-home buyers would still exist in six months. He replied, “I can give them a guarantee that we are looking at all of the range of housing products that the Government provides.” Which is Bishop speak for “No”.

Newshub indicated that it was later confirmed the grants would be abolished in the budget. So first-home buyers can join the queue for Nicola’s guillotine, only eight sleeps to go.

Oh and if you believe that this change represents a boost to social housing spending, boy have I got a bridge to sell you.

You can watch the full clip from Newshub here:

To be honest I was never that enamoured with the policy, it was a drop in a rising ocean, which would only help a few. A single life jacket on the Titanic.

It didn’t do anything for most who are struggling with the affordability of buying their first home. But it did help some people into homes of their own, making it that slightest bit more possible.

There are other things I’d far rather see the government do, for example providing low interest, fixed rate, long term state mortgages, like they used to.

Something has to be done about the price of houses of course, but a fixed three percent, thirty year mortgage, would at least insulate first-home owners from volatility in interest rates.

However this government seems to be simply turning their backs on first-home buyers.

In the Newshub report first-home buyer Mia Bright says, “I think it'd be devastating for first-home buyers. Myself and quite a number of my friends have all bought houses in the last two years and most of us did use that grant, I don't think the Government cares about first-home buyers.”

I think Mia is right, although there’s another group that the coalition seems to care even less about.

The other night 1 News led with a piece on Kāinga Ora, bemoaning the costs of our social housing provider. My first response was oh flip, except it wasn’t “flip” of course. There was one reason and one reason only they were telling us about this, setting this terrible scene of out of control expenditure.

Those flippery suckers, a term used in yesterday’s comments section by Brian, are planning to sell off our state houses - again.

We all know how tax and society work. It’s kind of like an insurance policy, we all pay although only some of us will end up needing it.

Some of us need schools for our kids, others don’t and generally accept that paying for other people’s kids to learn is simply part of being in a society - unless they’re a real jerk.

We fund expensive medical equipment, facilities, and medications that hopefully we won’t need but as a collective we contribute so those who do get what they need.

Surely the most basic of these needs is having a place to call home. If we don’t see ensuring that everyone has that as a non negotiable then perhaps Margaret Thatcher, ACT Party pinup, was right when she said:

The way Chris Bishop and others were talking was certainly an odd way of looking at things - of course social housing costs money. Building houses and maintaining them is an expensive business - but a necessary one.

Moving those assets into some sort of holding company or third party ownership that will seek to make a profit must surely be the first step on a blatant slippery slope towards the mass sell off of homes. A shift to making financial, rather than social, decisions about our housing stock.

Bishop of course made weaselly worded denials, but would you trust those? I know I sure as heck wouldn’t.

Yesterday in parliament there was an urgent debate on the Government’s response to the Kāinga Ora review, in which Labour’s Kieran McAnulty, who called for the debate, really spelled it out with a quite wonderful speech.

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Normally I’d have a paywall about here, or a little higher up, but I really wanted everyone to read about Kieran’s fabulous speech. Rest assured the next newsletter will be for paid subscribers. If you’d like to join them you can subscribe to Nick’s Kōrero this month for 30% off. That makes an annual subscription $59.50, or a monthly one $5.59, for the first year.

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You can watch the full debate here if you want to, Kieran speaks first, or there is a summary below.

He begins by saying that when it comes to Social Housing the National Party are all talk, have always been all talk, and they always will be all talk. He spoke of Bishop and Luxon standing in front to the media, “looking for every possible excuse they could to undermine Kāinga Ora and the provision of state houses in this country.”

Kieran said he was not prepared to refer to the report as being “independent”, as it was written by Bill English. “The man who oversaw the sale of state houses while he was Finance Minister isn’t anywhere near independent.”

Chris Bishop, and the “independent” Bill English. Image: 1 News.

He had a point. It’s kind of like inviting the homeless round for dinner and telling them the menu has been prepared by Hannibal Lecter.

McAnulty said that the record of the previous National government speaks for itself. “In the nine years that they governed the number of state houses went backwards by 1,500. And the bloke that oversaw that is the bloke that oversaw the review that the Prime Minister and the Housing Minister use to justify their agenda.”

It is rather setting the fox to guard the hen house. What next? A report from Simon “I Love Roads” Bridges on the cost of delivering rail?

Kieran reminded us that state houses increased by 14,000 in six years under the Labour government.

Our house is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy 'cause of you

Let’s stop and think about that for a moment.

Under National last time we had 1,500 fewer state houses, and under Labour we got an increase of 14,000. That’s a hell of a lot of families in warm dry homes - we shouldn’t be complaining about where things are at, we should be holding a parade to thank the last government for delivering 14,000 new state homes in the middle of a global pandemic.

So the next time someone starts moaning about Kiwibuild, or saying the last government didn’t do anything, you tell them about those 14,000 state houses and tell them to stick that in their pipe and smoke it.

Can I get a “Hell yeah”?

The Labour spokesperson said that Luxon and Bishop were being disingenuous, that during the election campaign they promised their government would build more houses than the Labour government.

He said that over the last seven months we’ve seen nothing, we’ve seen blaming, dodging around the issues, and claims that he believes are disingenuous.

He went further saying that claims Labour were aware of plans to sell 10,000 state houses were simply not true and that had actually come from a report commissioned by the Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis.

A report that was based on there being no funding from the coalition for social houses, public houses, or state houses beyond 2025.

So in essence National have a report that shows social housing is unaffordable - if they plan to stop spending money on social housing! What a genius conclusion, I wonder how much they charged the taxpayer for that brilliant insight?

Kieran said if they want to blame us, they can blame us for housing people. While they look for excuses and distractions. They’ve introduced interest deductibility for landlords, a $2.9b tax cut, added restrictions on accessing emergency housing, made it easier to kick Kāinga Ora tenants out with nowhere for them to go, and easier for private landlords to evict tenants without a reason.

McAnulty said housing providers around the coutry were pausing or cancelling building projects because the coalition won’t confirm the funding.

He said it’s like the coalition think New Zealanders are thick, but he said they’re not thick and they know what to expect from this government when they see the Prime Minister, that morning on Breakfast, unable to answer a simple question - how many state houses will you sell? He refused to answer.

Kieran finished by saying, “they are shaping up Kāinga Ora to perform what happened in the last National government. A mass transfer of state owned houses to other organisations, be they community housing providers or be they these new associations modelled on what’s happening in the UK.

Of all the European examples to follow housing policy, the UK is the last one. The number of social houses has gone down, the number of homeless has gone up, it is the very thing we shouldn’t be doing. It is the very thing they will do. Because it’s the very thing they did last time. If they don’t fund public houses the numbers will go down.”

He’s not wrong, the UK’s the last place we should be following when it comes to housing:

It was an outstanding speech, it should have lead the news but I’m not even sure if it was mentioned. There seems to have been scant coverage of it in the media.

As I’ve written before I don’t see a need to change the Labour leader at present. Chippy’s a good man, my impression is he has been coming across well in recent weeks - he certainly impresses me with the the things he says. Perhaps a bit of time in opposition is not a bad thing for people to see the fight in him.

But there’s no denying that McAnulty has a real charm, he speaks in way that is very genuine and down to earth and as Luxon looks increasingly out of touch as this term progresses that good keen man offering from Kieran will be pretty compelling. Whatever happens down the line it’s good for Labour to have such a passionate and capable housing spokesperson.

I really like the photo below that Kieran posted. I shared it last night with the title “You call that a thumb? This is a thumb.” It’s quite a contrast with a certain other thumb.

Photo: https://www.facebook.com/McAnultyLabour

Everyone deserves a warm, dry home. As far as I’m concerned everyone should be able to own a home too. Why should some miss out while others have so much?

For me, in a country like ours, it’s awful to think of someone going through their life without feeling the joy and security of owning the place they live in. What’s more there’s no reason for it to happen, it’s simply a choice between prioritising that versus something else.

The people in charge right now don’t seem to be making very good choices. But there is one bloke in parliament that would make a hell of a Housing Minister.