While the Tauranga property market goes mental, with houses selling within 24 hours of being put on the market and too many Kiwis priced out of the opportunity to purchase their own homes, rental prices have sky-rocketed. They have increased by 9.7 per cent in the past 12 months alone.
It is no wonder, then, that at our New Zealand First Tauranga office we've been helping an increasing number of couples into State housing each week, and, along with the rising house and rent prices, their numbers are also likely to continue increasing.
And, while the poverty gap grows as quickly as our housing crisis, at the hands of a National government whose policies are working for no-one, the Government feels the need to drive the knife down further by proposing to place State housing under the ownership of Australian organisation Horizon Housing, or private interests.
Putting Kiwi tenants under the control of an overseas landlord is short-sighted. Sacrificing our assets to foreign buyers is reckless. And sending more taxpayer money overseas is irresponsible.
State housing, funded by Kiwi taxpayers, if owned by foreign landlords with foreign partners and shareholders will see Kiwi tax dollars reinvested into foreign nations.
In light of the Government's determined enthusiasm regarding TPPA, decisions such as these, leaving the care of the most vulnerable in our society in the hands of foreign corporations, must be stopped.
Under the TPPA, were State housing privately owned, the Government would be unable to stop foreign corporate landlords from exploiting vulnerable Kiwis for profits without facing court charges. The Government would be equally unable to return ownership of State housing back to the State, once sold.
