Bruce Bisset: There's no profit in the poor

Now take that sidestreet turn and ask yourself why half the houses are unoccupied while the other half are overflowing, writes Bruce Bisset. Photo / File

Seems to me the comfortably-clad sceptics pondering whether the so-called "war on the poor" exists could try visiting the back-burbs of Hastings and Napier for answer.

Turn down any sidestreet in Camberley or Maraenui to have it affirmed: rows of dejected State houses, either actually or semi-derelict, in which mostly brown-skinned families crowd together behind flaking paint and old sheets used for curtains.

Often relatives are jumbled around properties in caravans and cars and garages and, in winter, rain leaks down the walls and sparse warmth from two-bar heaters goes straight out the gaps in the floorboards.

Yet still the poor are pilloried by any above their station as bludgers and failed parents who should stop breeding and raise themselves by their bootstraps - as if it were that simple, as if they are to blame for their plight. As if they have no right to exist at all.

Yes, many are on welfare benefits of some description, but thanks to changes in criteria including any number of whimsical departmental thresholds designed to artificially cut unemployment numbers, many others no longer qualify for assistance.

These cast-outs are supposed to live on thin air. And, as far as this Government is concerned, be thankful for it.

While those who do work often work two jobs yet still earn below the so-called "average" wage, and have to spin that money out across too many mouths, and are caught between the closing jaws of higher eligibility for aid and a lowering ceiling for such "benefits" as they do receive, so that any real incentive to improve their income is not just removed, but penalised.

Add in that education is a luxury you can only take advantage of if you're not sick or hungry or both, and you may begin to comprehend the dispirited bleakness of living on the bottom rungs of New Zealand society today.

Here's a quick fact for you: in the 1970s, a standard minimum wage could support a family of three. Today, that same standard supports one adult - a very frugal couple at best.

And in real terms - for anyone who hasn't bothered to check the facts in the past 40 years - social welfare benefits have devalued even more.

So unless you have two incomes - one of which may be from crime - raising children with care is out of the question.

Now take that sidestreet turn and ask yourself why half the houses are unoccupied while the other half are overflowing. Surely it can't be a lack of demand.

When the East Coast features the second-worst statistics in the country in unemployment, health, educational achievement, wage rates.

No, there has to be another factor. And there is.

The changes in eligibility for State housing, which proscribes half of those who need a home from getting one.

As to why, try forced relocation: squeezing people to move to the big cities where those messy statistics can be absorbed into the mass and tidily forgotten - even if the ghettoes they'll occupy in Auckland are no better than the ones they leave behind here to be sold off for redevelopment.

People like to talk about the great lifestyle we have in the Bay, and fret over how to attract more folk to enjoy it.

Many already resident can't enjoy it, and won't until business invests in industry that creates decent new jobs.

But I don't imagine either business or government will spend big money on this problem. There's not enough profit left in our poor.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.