Editorial: Getting out of the ghetto

Chris Carter has brought a happy, ideological fervour to his new role of Minister of Housing. Not for him the pragmatism that led his predecessor to exclude private owners from the Talbot Park state housing renewal project in Glen Innes. Steve Maharey decided, quite sensibly, that the serious shortage of state housing meant the development should be restricted to state tenants. In any event, although he declined to mention it, there were likely to be few private owners keen to live in an area dominated by state housing for high-need tenants.

This approach does not satisfy Mr Carter. He says that he is "very sympathetic" to allowing some privately owned homes in Talbot Park. It ties in with his idea of eliminating the image of state housing in large concentrations, largely by pepper-potting Housing New Zealand property throughout the community. This would remove what, in Mr Carter's thinking, is the potential for ghetto-like developments that mock the notion of an egalitarian society.

The new minister's crusade has now led him to tilt at another feature of the same issue: property-owners putting covenants on their land titles to keep out state tenants. These contracts prohibit land being sold or leased to Housing NZ. According to Mr Carter, this is occurring at Flat Bush, a development in Manukau City, which should be "a modern, integrated community that welcomes all New Zealanders". He says that he has not ruled out a legal challenge to such prohibitive covenants, but sees providing incentives for councils and developers as a more fruitful avenue.

An even more productive path might be for Mr Carter to ponder why such covenants are becoming increasingly popular. It is not, as he suggests, all to do with developers attempting to achieve high property values. Much of the reason, in fact, relates to the responsiveness of Housing NZ, as the country's biggest landlord. Probably because of its large number of tenants, it does not answer complaints from neighbours with the alacrity associated with the vast majority of private landlords. Only a small minority of state tenants may be at fault, but their unpunished flouting of norms relating to tidiness, noise and the like has saddled the sector with a severe problem.

Private property rights, exercised through the use of covenants, are a ready solution. Their viability rests on the fact that any restriction can be put on a property provided it does not contravene the Bill of Rights Act. While Mr Carter appears optimistic about the outcome of a legal challenge, it is not easy to see how the non-discrimination and minority rights provisions of that law are being breached. And if a court decided they are, what is the implication, say, for councils that put covenants on the title of pensioner units, protecting the land for that use in perpetuity?

The broader question is to what extent private property rights can be limited by the public good, as enunciated by a government. Property rights should be paramount unless there is no other solution for a manifestly unfair and unreasonable situation. That is not the case here. The answer lies largely with Housing NZ.

If it became a more vigilant landlord, and responded quickly and assertively to neighbourhood concerns and breaches of tenancy agreements, it would find the stigma attached to state housing dissipated. Private owners would have no qualms about living next door to state tenants, and the shortage of state housing would begin to be resolved.

That should be the thrust of Mr Carter's endeavours. Success would mean that exclusionary covenants soon became redundant.