Thoughts on housing, part two

Meredith Akuhata-Brown

Opinion

I received a few emails about my opinion piece on the housing crisis. A couple of councillors asked what my angle was (I think we should all disclose property ownership like MPs do), and one out-of-town motelier was unhappy that in my role as a public servant, I would speak unkindly about those making money from emergency housing.

Moteliers are generally in the short-term tourist tenancy business, so the past two years of the Covid pandemic have been challenging for them, and providing emergency housing has been a good option for many. While some are making a lot of money from the growing housing crisis, I'm not sure many of us think motel owners are suitable emergency-housing landlords. The reality is, this is a public policy crisis, not a shortage of housing — nearly 200,000 homes were left unoccupied across the country at the 2018 census.

Emergency housing is, by definition, for homeless families — many experience related trauma and high anxiety, feeling paralysed, embarrassed or hopeless in their predicament in a cycle of transience.

I also don't begrudge those who have had the opportunity to build their own or others' personal housing portfolios and enjoy the spoils of their gains. With the average house price in Gisborne doubling in the past six years, a number of factors are responsible: property investors who treat housing as a commodity; the real estate industry that understandably serves those who can pay the highest price for properties; politicians who refuse to do anything substantive to remove incentives for property speculation; and the rest of us who vote for these spineless politicians.

When we see so many people suffering and when the numbers of children suffering grows to the thousands in our region, shouldn't we all challenge the crisis that we're ultimately responsible for?

The truth is that some have so much more than they need, while many others have less and less — the New Zealand I grew up in was far more egalitarian than it is now.

The media highlights some of the woeful stories of homelessness and eviction of victims of an out-of-control housing market based on too few public housing options and too many incentives for private speculators.

New Zealand has a long history of social housing provided by central government, local government and not-for-profit organisations.

State homes were rented to families with the intention they were not life-long tenants and could one day be able to find either another private rental, save to buy the family home or rent to buy their state house. After nearly 40 years of free market neo-liberal public policy, the current Government has started to invest in more public housing, but it won't be enough if the cost of land isn't also controlled.

I lived at 2 York Street for nearly 20 years, it was a tight-knit neighbourhood. I watched some families move on to home ownership through the support of their parents and the different government loan schemes available at the time.

Many residents had no real desire to own a home due to the fact that their state home had become their family home. After both Wattie's and the meatworks closed down, many of our neighbours had to move into casual employment — like my mother who was a caregiver — or seasonal work in the fields, and many of their children became long-term unemployed. So 100 years after Maori were the highest group of homeowners in the country, we are now in a situation where 79 percent of Pakeha own the home they live in, but only 11 percent of Maori own their home.