Dialogue: Now what about others who are poorly housed?

Tomorrow is the day that the Government can say it has delivered on its promise to reintroduce income-related rents in state houses. For the 20,000 or so Auckland households lucky enough to have a state house, this is the day that they are about $50 a week better off. But for the other 60,000 Auckland families who qualify for a state house but aren't lucky enough to have one, it is just another day.

The market-related rents policy of the last Government, generously subsidised as it was by the accommodation supplement, was a disaster, financially and socially. The cost of the supplement rose from about $370 million in 1993 to nearly $900 million last year.

At the same time we saw a dramatic rise in the incidence of communicable diseases in places such as South Auckland, caused in part by the crowding that high rents forced on Maori and Pacific families.

With income-related rents in state houses, the Government has added another $100 million or so to the cost of our public housing programmes.

However, fewer than one in four families who need help are likely to get anything extra. For those who are missing out, the wait for a state house will most likely be eternal.

Those people in a state house are unlikely to move in a hurry and the Government has not shown a great interest in building large numbers of new state houses on expensive urban land in Auckland. Furthermore, middle-class Aucklanders are showing themselves to be less than enthusiastic about state houses in their communities. Witness the local opposition to Housing New Zealand's plans to build medium-density housing in Lynfield and Glen Eden.

As families wait in vain for a state house, they are likely to resort to the same crazy tactics that were used during the late 1980s when we last had income-related rents. For some people the only way to get a state house is to make their family's housing situation worse. You will be assessed as having a greater housing need if you go to live in a car, a garage or an emergency house.

Watch as we see a rapid increase in emergency houses as people learn how to manipulate the new allocation rules. These people will no doubt be ably assisted and encouraged by community workers, who will get jobs in the new emergency houses and will be paid to wring their hands in despair that life should be so unfair to the individual families with whom they work.

The income-related rents for state houses will not only encourage perverse behaviour from some families, they will discourage initiative from people living in state houses to improve their circumstances.

As a family in a state house moves from a benefit to a wage, the income-related rent policy, as it is being delivered, has the rent rising at 50 per cent of extra income, not the promised 25 per cent. This means that if a family manages to earn $100 more than the dole, $50 of this will disappear in extra rent - a classic poverty-trap problem that the officials in Wellington just cannot perceive.

We cannot allow ourselves to be convinced by the rhetoric and the good-news publicity surrounding income-related rents that this single policy is the panacea for our festering housing problem. There is still much to be done, and what is most alarming are the messages from Government that we should not expect more.

For example, the Treasurer, Michael Cullen, warned the Labour Party conference against expecting any great increase in public spending. These comments tend to suggest that the Government, or at least Dr Cullen, has failed to grasp the extent of the housing problem in Auckland or of the cost of doing something about it and, indeed, the cost of doing nothing.

The next steps for a decent housing policy involve at least three key directions. First, we should expect a bold state-house building programme in Auckland. Unless we build an additional 1000 state houses in Auckland each year for the next five years, we are unlikely to see any significant improvement in the quality of life for the poorest 20 per cent of Aucklanders.

The second initiative must be a programme to support home ownership for low-income families. The decline in levels of home ownership in Auckland's working-class suburbs over the past decade has contributed to increased transience and mobility of families. This, in turn, has eroded a sense of community and has made it difficult to provide the stability required to give children a good education and a healthy start.

A state-subsidised home-ownership programme for low-income families may also provide the means to move people out of state houses and into their own homes. By doing so, we will see a greater turnover in the state-house stock and hence be able to help more people overall.

There must also be work in what has become known as the third sector. This is the not-for-profit, community-based sector of organisations, such as housing associations, housing cooperatives and non-profit housing developers. In Europe and Canada this sector is a significant provider of affordable housing.

In New Zealand, we have always provided public housing through a centralised bureaucracy and there has been little scope for or encouragement of anything but the public sector-private sector dichotomy.

The Government is working with Maori groups in rural areas on third-sector housing initiatives, but little has been offered to urban groups except visits from consultants and researchers.

Good-quality and affordable housing for all citizens is the foundation of a decent and fair society. The past decade of market-driven policies delivered nothing but a huge transfer of public resources away from the people who need it most.

The reintroduction of income-related rents is a good start in rebuilding a worthwhile public housing system. This policy is, however, flawed in its execution and is really the easiest part of a complex and expensive programme.

* Alan Johnson is general manager of the Peoples Centre.