Samantha Motion: Our housing response is broken if we harm one to help another

The cost to buy or rent a house has risen out of reach for some. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Last weekend, the Rotorua Daily Post ran a story about a woman who had been in emergency housing, living in the motels in that city.

Her story of how she and her two children wound up there was a modern Kiwi tragedy.

She says they had a private rental, but her landlord decided to turn it into transitional housing and asked her to move out.

"He said it was to get people out of motels and into a house but I said we have to get out of your house and go into a motel."

What fresh, circular hell is this, where we put people into motels to get people out of motels?

The Government's efforts to increase public housing stock have not been without negative consequence.

It has come down on private housing investors while also investing in a great deal of housing itself - sometimes in competition with the first-home buyers it also seeks to help.

Newshub reported in April that since 2017 the Government had bought 1054 houses, some in the affordable range that would likely put it in direct competition with first-home buyers.

As of the end of 2019, 13 of those purchased houses were in Tauranga, at a cost of $8.9 million, as reported by NZME.

The Government spent another $1.8m buying three houses in Katikati, but bought only one house in each of Rotorua ($683,000) and Taupō ($630,500).

It also subsidises rents through community housing services and trusts, which try to get landlords to take on people who struggle to compete in a tight rental market because of their history or situation.

To offset the perceived risk, they may offer fee-free tenancy management and market rent - reliable and guaranteed thanks to government subsidies. You couldn't blame a landlord for liking the sound of that deal but what happens to the tenants moved on?

Everyone can see that more houses are needed.

Sometimes the spectre of "ghost houses" are raised as a solution to this - thousands of houses around New Zealand, including in main centres, supposedly sitting empty.

Census 2018 data showed 200,000 empty homes nationwide.

But the Government told NZME a couple of weeks ago it believes this data to be overstated having potentially included baches and homes empty for reasons other than non-occupancy.

It's doing more research with the Electricity Authority.

Whatever the number, however, what is to be done with those houses? Owners cannot be forced to take tenants. Bach ownership is a tradition and a business in New Zealand, and one unlikely to be swayed by moral arguments about having two homes while others have none.

So that leaves building. Another area fraught with difficulties you've heard plenty about.

There is lots of goodwill and intention in the housing market, but the system is broken.

We must help the people on the bottom rung of the housing ladder.

But if we can't do that without pushing down people who have worked hard to clamber a little further up, then we are doing it wrong.