Nickie Muir: More than a house, it's home

Nickie Muir.

"It is not responsible for newspapers to publish calls for class warfare, extortion and disorder like this. The Northern Advocate should be ashamed."

So said one irate reader of a previous column, ("Turn the tables on landlords") and he would be right if I had the time, skills or my magical frigging unicorn ponies would obey me in my quest for world domination.

Class warfare seems a rather ambitious project for someone who can't even get a bunch of 15-year-olds to listen to anything I have to say, but I'm willing to concede I might have powers or intentions that I know not of.

Filed under irate/outraged/rabid of Remuera, was the underlying anxiety or fear engendered by asking the question; "What happens when tenants just can't pay the rent?"

I could have really ramped it up and suggested bringing back squatters' rights for the thousands of houses that don't even need tenants to pay mortgages. I didn't think that would be helpful.

How would it affect future voting when the wages of the majority no longer covers rent in our biggest city and buying becomes an impossible dream?

Do we really want to find out if the end, as the CEO of New Zealand's largest bank outlined last week, is invariably messy.

This is when democracy is both at its greatest and also at its most dangerous for those who wish to maintain the status quo.

What many of those with large investment portfolios or those renting out sub-standard garages to "just your average Kiwi Mum and Dad" (as opposed to the ones who were supposed to invest in electricity companies), don't understand, is the effect precarious living has on, well, everything.

If you are worried about a whole sector of society under-achieving at school - you are definitely worried about housing.

The kids who drift like seasonal fruit pickers through a series of schools in a year and are classed under Ministry data as "transient" like a nomadic tribe, are often trailing parents who were unable to pay rent or couldn't find the bond to secure themselves a place to live.

These kids tend not to want to make friends or get stuck in - why would they? They don't know how long they're going to be allowed to stick around. If you are interested in crime and safety - you are interested in housing, because the kids who don't have a family or a community that they can depend on are unlikely to feel much loyalty or reciprocity towards society.

If you are interested in health outcomes - even from the mercenary approach of stopping the Budget from blowing out so it can keep paying for all the hip replacements we'll need in our ageing population - then you're definitely interested in housing.

Every winter we went, on average six times for at least three days each, to hospital for our daughter's asthma. And then we insulated the house - and never went back.

A housing crisis is much more than just a financial one.