Letters: People of the Year an 'inspiration'

DESERVING: Gina Peiffer and Elmer Peiffer were deserving winners of the Person of the Year award, according to one reader. PHOTO/FILE

Thank you for your recent editorial regarding the award of Persons of the Year to Gina and Elmer Peiffer of Love Soup Rotorua.

What an inspiration this couple is to we lesser mortals who rush about in a frenzy during the festive season, focusing upon ourselves and our immediate families.

I shall watch with interest the Government's response to homelessness.

Prior to his resignation as Prime Minister, I believe John Key never acknowledged that New Zealand has a housing crisis. One hopes that his successor will act rapidly to address this shameful, nationwide issue.

JACKIE EVANS
Rotorua

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Our used housing investment market is on a bullish swing. The trouble is that these used houses produce nothing, so the money invested is purely speculative. There is no gain to the country from them, they cannot be exported, they are not transferable.

Housing reform is therefore needed, where used housing becomes a special type of asset, protected from investors.

Chemists, for example, until recently (and maybe still), can only own a single shop in a town. Why is that?

It is because people are obliged to buy medicine and government (us) considered it necessary to protect them from exploitation.

People are also obliged to live in houses ... so there is a good case for protecting them from the current housing exploitation by the middle-class (who own nearly all the used, tenanted houses).

There would be shrieks of anger from the middle class, but so what? The rental class are people too: nobody cares about them either.

GJ PHILIP
Rotorua