Luxon's Homelessness Story Falls Apart in 48 Hours

Christopher Luxon has spent the better part of this week proving, in the most unflattering way imaginable, that neither he nor the people paid to advise him can be trusted to get a basic fact straight for longer than forty eight hours.

On Monday, fronting the post-Cabinet press conference, the Prime Minister admitted he did not know that Auckland has no night shelters for people sleeping rough. This is a man who has now run the country for the best part of three years, who apparently could not tell you the most rudimentary fact about the largest city in the country he leads.

This lack of knowledge, despite Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson, a woman with over a decade of frontline experience, telling anyone who would listen that she has never seen homelessness in New Zealand at this scale in her career. Demand at the mission is constantly at capacity, with people now sleeping in the mission's laneway because it is unsafe to sleep elsewhere at night, and Luxon seemed entirely untroubled by any of it as he pivoted straight back to defending his government's spending record.

On 2 July, RNZ reported:

 

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon admits he didn't know there was no night shelter for rough sleepers in Auckland

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has admitted he did not know there was no night shelter in Auckland for people sleeping rough.

His weekly post-cabinet media conference followed revelations Ministry of Social Development staff have performance targets to reduce emergency housing numbers.

This is the pattern with this floundering Prime Minister and it ought to embarrass everyone around him. Confronted with a real and worsening crisis on the streets, his instinct was not to address the failures of his own administration, but to immediately reach for a rehearsed comparison to the previous government and a set of statistics chosen to somehow try and make him look competent.
 

On 1 July, 1News reported:

 

Does NZ have night shelters? PM stands by remark

The Prime Minister is standing by a statement that New Zealand has no night shelters, after Labour used the remark to accuse him of being out of touch with the reality facing homeless New Zealanders.

Luxon was today pressed by the Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick over suggestions of rising homelessness and rough sleeping.

We don't have night shelters in New Zealand, Luxon told the House. We don't think the evidence works where someone shows up for one day and moves on.

That a Prime Minister could go from confessing he did not know a fact about his own largest city to confidently asserting a sweeping, false claim about the entire nation within two days is not a forgivable slip.

Consider what each explanation actually requires you to believe. If it was carelessness, then the leader of this country walked into the House of Representatives and made a nationwide claim about homelessness policy without anyone in his office checking whether it was true, on a subject his government had already been repeatedly embarrassed over. That is not a minor oversight.

That is a Prime Minister and an entire staff of press secretaries, policy advisors and communications staff failing to do the most basic due diligence on a topic they knew was under active scrutiny.

If, on the other hand, it was deliberate, then the explanation is worse, not better. It would mean Luxon and his office made a conscious decision that the way to handle an admission of ignorance was not to own it, but to bury it under a bolder and more sweeping claim that sounded like settled policy rather than an accident. That is not damage control, it is a Prime Minister choosing to mislead the public rather than admit he had not done his homework, gambling that a confident assertion in the House would carry more weight than the truth.

Either explanation leaves Luxon exposed. Carelessness of this scale in a Prime Minister is a governance failure. Deliberate misdirection is a integrity failure. There is no third option available to him here where this sequence of events reflects well on his competence or his honesty, and that is precisely why the contradiction has stuck and continues to draw headlines.

After admitting his ignorance on the Monday, Luxon returned to Parliament the following day and flatly told the House there were no night shelters anywhere in the country, a claim so overreaching his own office was later forced to walk it back into something narrower and more defensible.

On 1 July, the Labour Party website posted:

Luxon doesn't know the facts about homeless

Christopher Luxon's comments about night shelters show a Prime Minister who is completely out of touch with the reality facing homeless New Zealanders.

On Monday, Christopher Luxon didn't know Auckland had no night shelter. Today, he stood in Parliament and falsely claimed there are no night shelters anywhere in New Zealand, Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said.

That is still a generous reading of what happened this week, and even that generous reading is brutal. The less generous reading is that somewhere in the Beehive, an advisor looked at a Prime Minister who had just publicly admitted ignorance and decided the smart move was to arm him with an even bolder, even less accurate claim to recite in the House the very next day.

It appears that Luxon is surrounded by people either too incompetent to check a basic fact before putting it in his mouth, or too cynical to care whether it was true.

Either way, the 2400 families Luxon says have been moved out of motels deserve real suspicion rather than applause. That figure comes from a system where MSD staff are effectively rewarded for turning people away, which means the Prime Minister is standing in Parliament claiming credit for a success rate built, at least in part, on rationing help rather than genuinely reducing need.

None of this required a conspiracy to expose. It only required a Prime Minister and his office who could describe the facts on the ground accurately across a single week, about as low a bar as any competent government could be asked to clear.

That this administration couldn't manage it, while people are sleeping in cars and on park benches because there is nowhere else for them to go, tells New Zealanders exactly where homelessness sits on this government's list of priorities.

The Politics of New Zealand's Rental Crisis

There is a particular kind of dishonesty that often dresses itself up as economic theory. For years in this country, we were told that New Zealand's rental market was simply supply and demand in action, the invisible hand at work, efficiently allocating housing to those who valued it most.

What it actually was, of course, was something rather more tawdry: a system engineered to extract the maximum possible sum of money from anyone unfortunate enough to need to rent a roof over their head.

Let us be precise about the mechanism. When a prospective tenant applied for a rental property in New Zealand, they were routinely required to declare their income. This was presented, with straight faces, as an affordability check. In practice, it functioned as a price-setting instrument. Landlords and property managers could observe what a household earned and calibrate the rent accordingly, not to the condition of the property, not to its size, or whether the plumbing actually worked, but to the upper limit of what the prospective tenants could conceivably be made to pay.

The signal here was not quality. It was vulnerability. Middle and higher-income earners found themselves charged accordingly, regardless of whether they were occupying a warm, well-maintained home or a damp, mouldering box dressed up with fresh paint and a flattering TradeMe photograph. Low-income Kiwis often didn't even get their foot in the door.

The results were entirely predictable. By 2022, some 46 percent of renting households were spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent, compared to just 19 percent in 1988. Since 2003, house prices had increased by 230 percent, whilst median household income grew by only 137 percent. Housing was no longer all about shelter. It had become a very profitable business enterprise.

The insignificant easing of rents we have witnessed recently isn't the result of good governance to remedy this issue. The mean weekly rent in New Zealand for the year to September 2025 was $568, showing a 0.6% decline compared to the prior year. This is welcome in itself, but its cause isn't deregulation or the benevolence of landlords. It is a symptom of a recession and emigration. Net overseas migration slowed to just 13,066 in the year to July 2025, compared to a peak of over 135,000 in late 2023, and the net outflow of New Zealand citizens hit a record high of 47,600 in a single year. People are leaving in their tens of thousands because they cannot afford to live in New Zealand.

That is a grim form of market correction, and it deserves to be named as such. Contrast it with Australia, where sustained migration has pushed rents up by an estimated 43.8 percent over five years, with the typical renter paying around $10,500 more annually than at the start of the pandemic. New Zealand's slight moderation has been purchased at a considerable social cost, the departure of skilled younger workers at a rate that constitutes yet another unsustainable crisis.

Against this backdrop, the Green Party's Renters' Rights campaign proposes a two percent annual cap on rent increases, the reversal of no-cause evictions, a Rental Warrant of Fitness, and the construction of tens of thousands of quality public homes. It represents not a radical departure but a long-overdue acknowledgement of reality.

On Wednesday, RNZ reported:

Greens promise to cap rent rises at 2 percent a year

The 'A home for everybody' policy was launched by the party co-leaders and local MP Tamatha Paul at a rental home in Wellington on Wednesday afternoon.

Co-leader Marama Davidson said with rental costs increasing from 19 percent of incomes in 1988 to 30 percent in 2022, it was time for housing to be treated as a human right.

"In a country like Aotearoa, with our wealth of resources and skills, there is no excuse for people to go without a decent home, let along any home at all."

Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the Greens would build tens of thousands more public homes and support councils and community providers to do the same, stimulating local economies and creating jobs while curbing homelessness and waiting lists.

"This isn't rocket science," she said. "Mass building of public housing almost 100 years ago led to decades of stable, affordable homes for New Zealanders.

ACT Housing spokesperson Cameron Luxton responded by calling the campaign a plan to make more people homeless. This is, to put it plainly, a talking point that serves a specific constituency, and that constituency is clearly not tenants.

On Wednesday, Scoop reported:

Greens Revive Campaign To Make More People Homeless

ACT Housing spokesperson Cameron Luxton says the Green Party’s latest housing policy is a return to the same failed ideas that drove up rents and reduced supply.

“We’ve just seen rents fall nationally for the first time in years after anti-landlord policies were reversed. The Greens now want to take us straight back.

WHO ACTS FOR ACT

The ACT Party was founded on the Rogernomics tradition of Roger Douglas, a disciple of the view that markets, left sufficiently alone, will solve all human problems. Three decades of evidence in New Zealand's housing sector clearly suggests otherwise. Yet the party's institutional memory, and crucially its donor base, remains firmly committed to the proposition that property investors are the real victims of housing policy.

This isn't merely ideological. It is financial, and the money trail isn't difficult to follow. Analysis by RNZ of Electoral Commission records found that people with interests in the property industry donated more than half of their political contributions to National, with ACT receiving 32 percent of the total, and Labour a mere two percent. As Victoria University senior research fellow Max Rashbrooke observed, donors of this scale enjoy a constant level of access to ministers that ordinary voters can only dream of.

The conflicts of interest are not merely financial. They are, in the most literal sense, structural. The 2024 Register of Pecuniary Interests shows that Parliament collectively owns 261 properties, an average of 2.2 per MP. National MPs account for the bulk of this, with 18 of them owning approximately 30 or more rental homes. One does not need to be a committed cynic to ask whether legislators with this much skin in the game are best placed to design fair tenancy law.

THE DAVID SEYMOUR PROBLEM

No examination of this subject is complete without dwelling on the particular and instructive case of David Seymour. For years, Seymour cultivated his public image as the honest outsider who simply could not afford to buy a home, a man of the people standing bravely against the landed political elites of Parliament. It was a compelling narrative. It was also, in material respects, completely untrue.

In 2021, Seymour was forced to correct his Register of Pecuniary Interests to disclose that he was a beneficiary of three trusts, the NN Faithfull Family Trust, the BH and VA Seymour Family Trust, and the Beachcomber Trust, two of which held property including a Northland beach house and a neighbouring section, and his father's house in Whangarei. These interests had not been declared in previous years, in violation of Parliamentary disclosure rules. His return was also filed late, drawing a formal rebuke from the Registrar of Pecuniary Interests, Sir Maarten Wevers.

Seymour called it an honest mistake and claimed he had legal advice saying he did not technically own the properties. That is a distinction the rest of us might find difficult to take seriously. A beneficiary of a trust that holds property stands to inherit or profit from that property. The rules requiring disclosure of such interests are not ambiguous. They are written plainly in Standing Orders, and Seymour is a lawmaker who has sat in Parliament for over a decade... a decade too long some might argue.

What makes this particularly pointed is that in 2017, when he was still falsely presenting himself as property-free, Seymour told RNZ: "The fact that the average National MP owns 2.2 properties of their own might suggest why they have spent a lot of time introducing solutions that you would almost suspect were not supposed to work, because they certainly have not." He was right. He was also, at that moment, a beneficiary of trusts that held the very kind of assets he was criticising his colleagues for owning.

One is entitled to ask what he was really doing when he invoked that argument. He was not speaking truth to power. He was in fact dishonestly presenting himself to the public as just another ordinary Kiwi.

Having now restored interest deductibility for rental property investors as a key plank of the coalition agreement with National, and having championed the removal of no-cause evictions, the right-wing coalition government have ensured that the landlord class which funds their political parties have received a considerable return for their political investment, an investment that is ultimately paid for with globally high rents.

A HOMELESSNESS CRISIS OF THEIR OWN MAKING

The claim that the Green Party's proposals would cause homelessness requires particular scrutiny, because the homelessness crisis is already here. It grew substantially under the very deregulatory settings that ACT champions, and it has worsened measurably under the current neoliberal government.

The number of people sleeping rough in Auckland more than doubled between September 2024 and September 2025. Wellington's Downtown Community Ministry recorded a 25 percent increase in rough sleepers in 2025 compared to the prior year. In Christchurch, the City Mission recorded 270 new clients in just six months to March 2025, up from 156 in the corresponding period prior.

The government tightenning the gateway to emergency housing is partly to blame, a policy that came into force in August 2024. The rate of emergency housing applications being declined rose from 4 percent in March 2024 to 36 percent by June 2025. One social agency reported that in a single month, every one of the 27 people they referred to Work and Income for emergency housing was turned away. The government has also reduced its funding for homelessness support by $79 million compared to the prior financial year.

Emergency housing motel numbers have fallen, from 3,141 in December 2023 to 591 a year later. Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka declared this a triumph. The Salvation Army described it more accurately as a likely contributor to the rising number of people living on the street.

To invoke the threat of future homelessness as a reason to do nothing about present homelessness is not policy analysis. It is a defunct defence of the arrangement that produced the crisis in the first place.

WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS

The international evidence is available to any government willing to look at it. Vienna has kept housing affordable for over a century through a combination of city land ownership and large-scale municipal development that sets a genuine price anchor for the broader rental market. 

Singapore's Housing and Development Board provides affordable housing to nearly 80 percent of the population, combining public construction, grants, and income-sensitive pricing to ensure that shelter is a right rather than a commodity to be speculated on. Finland, through its Housing First policy introduced in 2008, became the only European Union country where the number of homeless people has consistently declined year on year. These nations did not stumble into housing security by removing tenant protections and trusting property investors to be decent humans. They built it deliberately, through sustained public investment and enforceable standards.

WHAT REFORM MUST LOOK LIKE

Any meaningful reform in New Zealand must begin with a centralised rental database, a single authoritative register from which all real estate agents and property managers are required to operate. Every rental property should be assessed and graded by size, condition, insulation, heating, proximity to services, and structural integrity. Rents should be set in relation to that assessed quality, not in relation to the maximum amount prospective tenants can pay.

Properties should be offered to renters in order of quality, at affordable rents calibrated to their actual standard. The practical effect of this would be significant, as better quality houses would be rented first. Owners should also be substantially financially penalised if they leave their properties empty and dilapidated, or demolish houses that are still suitable for human habitation. A substantial proportion of New Zealand's older rental housing stock fails that test. The Healthy Homes Standards are a beginning. A Rental Warrant of Fitness, independently certified, publicly searchable, and tied to legal occupancy, is the logical next step.

The Tenancy Tribunal also requires substantive reform. The procedural and evidential disadvantages facing tenants in dispute with landlords are well documented. The current framework leans heavily toward those with legal experience and resources. Protections for renters need to be strengthened in law, not merely recommended as guidelines, and legal representation support for tenants at the Tribunal must be funded accordingly.

There are genuine risks in any rent control regime implemented carelessly. A blunt national cap, applied without regard for regional conditions, property quality, or supply dynamics, could suppress new construction if designed poorly. That's why the Green Party also owes New Zealand a costed, detailed build programme alongside its tenancy protections. Ambition without logistics isn't a housing policy. It is a press release.

But the answer to that risk is better policy design, not the continued absence of any policy at all.

And New Zealand must build state houses that people actually want to live in. Not cramped, isolated units on the periphery of cities, but well-designed, well-located homes that integrate their residents into communities with genuine access to schools, transport, parks, and employment. Vienna did not solve its housing crisis by building chicken coops. Neither did Singapore.

The lessons are available. The question, as ever in this country, is whether the political will exists to act on it, or whether we will continue to mistake the interests of an asset-rich parliamentary class for the national interest, and simply give up by accepting the resulting misery as a natural consequence of the free market.

The Coalition of Chaos Is Sinking New Zealand

There's a particular kind of arrogance that afflicts those who ascend to positions of power for which they are manifestly ill-prepared. It is not the arrogance of competence, of someone who has mastered their brief and knows it, but rather the breezy confidence of those who have never been seriously tested, and who mistake the trappings of office for the substance of competent governance.

It is precisely this brand of arrogance that has come to define the National-led Coalition of Chaos, and New Zealanders are now paying a very heavy price for it.

Let us begin with the Minister of Finance. Nicola Willis holds a degree in English literature and a postgraduate diploma in journalism, credentials that would serve her admirably as a book reviewer or a parliamentary press gallery correspondent, but which represent a curious qualification for the stewardship of a $400 billion economy.

One might charitably observe that some of New Zealand's more capable Finance Ministers have also lacked formal economics training. The difference, however, is one of disposition. Where her predecessors such as Bill English  listened to advisers, Willis has demonstrated a troubling tendency to do precisely the opposite.

When fifteen or more of the country's leading economists wrote open letters warning that her austerity programme would deepen and prolong the recession: that you cannot, as the PSA put it with admirable clarity, cut your way to prosperity. Willis's response was, in essence, to disagree and move on. The $43 billion in spending cuts she regards as a badge of honour are, in the view of those who actually study these things, a principal reason why New Zealand's economic recovery has been so anaemic, so halting, and so persistently disappointing.

The consequences of this ideological stubbornness are now documented not merely in the arguments of domestic critics, but in the assessments of global financial institutions. Fitch, the international credit ratings agency, has placed New Zealand's AA+ rating on negative outlook, warning that debt reduction is becoming "more difficult to envisage" as fiscal consolidation has been repeatedly delayed.

General government gross debt is now forecast to rise to 56% of GDP by June 2027, a figure that sits grotesquely above the 36.1% projection made when New Zealand was last upgraded in September 2022. That the delays have occurred across successive governments does not absolve the current administration; it indicts it, for it was handed a roadmap of warnings and chose to ignore them.

Meanwhile, Reuters has laid bare the structural fragility that underlies the government's cheerful forecasts. For decades, New Zealand has relied upon a rising housing market to engineer economic recoveries. That playbook has now failed.

On Monday, Reuters reported:

New Zealand struggles to regain economic mojo without housing recovery

At the same time, economic growth cooled in the fourth quarter, data showed last week, with construction slumping and consumer spending weak, even before the massive distruptions created by the ​war. The unemployment rate stands at a decade-high of 5.4%.

...

Government efforts to stoke growth have been lacklustre, even with an election looming on November 7 that is sure to be dominated by ​voter dissatisfaction over the economy. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has offered little aimed at reviving the labour market, which is still reeling from waves of public sector layoffs last year.

Even after the Reserve Bank slashed the Official Cash Rate from 5.5% to 2.25%, house prices remain some 20% below their pandemic peak, hollowing out the wealth effect upon which so many households depended. Borrowers are being squeezed, construction projects lie stalled, and a wave of New Zealanders, precisely the professionals and entrepreneurs a genuine growth strategy would seek to retain, have lost hope and are quietly departing for better opportunities in Australia.

Into this fraught domestic picture now falls the additional chaos of Donald Trump's war in the Middle East. Oil price inflation is pushing up borrowing costs globally, potentially forcing the Reserve Bank into a more hawkish stance at precisely the moment the economy can least afford it. New Zealand's substantial dependence on energy imports makes it acutely vulnerable.

Christopher Luxon, a former airline chief executive who has consistently demonstrated that managing a corporate balance sheet is rather different from governing a sovereign nation, appears to have no coherent response to this gathering storm beyond the ritual recitation of talking points about fiscal responsibility, the same fiscal responsibility, one might note, that Fitch has just formally called into question. It's that kind of incompetence that New Zealanders are starting to notice en masse.

Yesterday, The Guardian reported:

New Zealand PM’s ratings dip as fragile economy fails to impress before November election, poll shows

National leader Christopher Luxon drops in preferred PM stakes with rise in people saying country heading in wrong direction

The RNZ-Reid Research poll, released on Monday, also found a growing number of people felt that New Zealand was heading in the wrong direction.

Luxon slid two points to 17.3% in the preferred prime minister stakes – his lowest result across major polls since he became leader in 2023. Labour’s Chris Hipkins also dipped 0.4 points, to 20.7%.

The prime minister’s net favourability – the difference between those who rate his performance as good versus poor – has also dropped from -14 in January to -20.6, his weakest result in the Reid Research series since he became National’s leader in 2021.

Meanwhile, Luxon’s National party has slipped nearly five points behind the main opposition party, Labour. If an election were held today, the parliamentary left and rights blocs would face a hung parliament.

The cruellest irony of this government's tenure is that its most zealous cuts have fallen upon the very investments in science, in public services, in wages, and in housing infrastructure, that might have produced the growth it so loudly claims to want.

While minimum wage workers have absorbed a third consecutive real-terms pay cut, and while $12 billion was stripped from pay equity settlements affecting predominantly female workers, landlords have had their interest deductibility restored and tobacco companies have breathed a sigh of relief to the tune of $3.2 billion dollars.

New Zealand deserves better than a Finance Minister with an English literature degree who dismisses the warnings of fifteen economists, led by a Prime Minister who cannot read a room and remains fluent only in corporate double-speak. Reuters did not mince words: Luxon has offered little aimed at reviving a labour market still reeling from the waves of public sector layoffs his own government inflicted. The Coalition of Chaos has not merely failed to provide a growth strategy. It has actively dismantled the conditions under which one might have been possible.

National's Housing Hypocrisy: New Zealand Pays the Price

While Christopher Luxon's National-led government has been busy patting themselves on the back for delivering a whopping 25 state houses in Rotorua that apparently employed 300 people, they've quietly gone and axed another 76 desperately needed state house builds in Porirua East. Because nothing says "caring about ordinary Kiwis" like cancelling homes in one of the country's most housing-stressed areas.

The decision to cancel these developments in Porirua East represents a fundamental failure to understand the housing crisis facing New Zealand. Porirua has consistently recorded some of the highest rates of housing stress in the Wellington region, with families forced into overcrowded conditions or makeshift arrangements. The cancelled developments would have provided essential relief for dozens of families currently on Kāinga Ora's extensive waiting list, families who now face an indefinite wait for secure housing.

Today, The Post reported:

Porirua East social housing developments axed in Kāinga Ora review

More than 70 new planned social houses in Porirua’s eastern suburbs have been cancelled by a Kāinga Ora review, with the local MP calling it the wrong decision.

The 76 homes across three developments are located in Cannons Creek, on Castor Cres, Matahourua Cres, Hazard Gr and Bellona Place. Out of the affected houses, 22 are single-bedroom, 36 are two-bedroom, 13 have three bedrooms, two are four-bedroom houses and three houses have five bedrooms.

What makes this decision particularly galling is the government's simultaneous celebration of a 25-home development in Rotorua. The NZ Herald dutifully reported that these 25 homes employed 300 people during construction – a figure that works out to 12 workers per house. This is either the most labour-intensive construction project in human history, or it's statistical manipulation designed to generate positive headlines for a government desperately trying to appear competent on housing.

Today, the NZ Herald reported:

On The Up: 25 new Kāinga Ora homes ready for Rotorua families

The first stage of a Kāinga Ora housing development in Ōwhata is about to see 25 new homes become available for Rotorua people in emergency and transitional housing.

The development is being praised as a success after employing about 300 tradespeople since October 2023 - a majority of them from Rotorua.

...

Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell said there was no doubt there was a significant housing need in Rotorua.

“There’s also a need to prioritise local contractors as much as possible, and it’s great this has been recognised through this housing project.”

She said Penny Homes had an excellent reputation and was local to the region, so it was appreciated that Rotorua trades and suppliers were used.

“We’re seeing a record amount of housing options being consented and built in Rotorua, including retirement villages, iwi housing developments, and rural lifestyle blocks.”

The number of building consents have steadily declined since National came to power, making Tania Tapsell either deluded or an outright liar! Tapsell was in fact a strong supporter of closing down Rotorua's emergency housing, and has now gone into damage control as the numbers of homeless people in her region increases.

NZ building consents for new dwellings have declined by 16.3% annually since the October 2023 general election.

Jobs in the construction sector are also down 5.3% annually since the @NZNationalParty came to power. #nzpol pic.twitter.com/X4kDx6KtB9

— Jackal (@Jackalblog) May 18, 2025

Using the NZ Herald's own inflated employment calculations, the 76 cancelled Porirua homes could have created approximately 840 construction jobs. That's 840 jobs eliminated in the name of fiscal responsibility, alongside the 76 families who will remain homeless. But this government has proven remarkably adept at finding money for corporate tax cuts while claiming poverty when it comes to housing the most vulnerable.

The Porirua cancellation forms part of a much larger pattern of deliberate housing reduction. Kāinga Ora has scrapped 212 projects nationwide, eliminating 3,479 homes that were planned to address New Zealand's housing shortage. Each cancelled home represents a family that will remain in housing stress, a family that this government has chosen to abandon in pursuit of their neoliberal agenda.

Well, we did it. Despite driving tens of thousands of surplus kiwi workers abroad, we've still increased unemployment by more than any other country in the OECD.
If you think unemployment was 'too low' in the 2020 - 2023 period (ghoul), the next graph might work better for you. pic.twitter.com/1LhdQHmDfo

— Musical Chairs (@MusicalChairs14) December 22, 2024

Simultaneously, the government has moved aggressively to reduce emergency housing provisions, effectively creating a pincer movement that traps families between cancelled permanent housing and eliminated temporary accommodation. The result is predictable: families are being pushed directly into homelessness because they cannot afford the high costs associated with private rentals. Housing providers have warned that the governments approach will create a significant increase in rough sleeping and family homelessness, but the government appears unconcerned about these terrible consequences of their uncaring policy decisions.

The economic logic of this approach is fundamentally flawed. Those 76 Porirua homes would have provided permanent housing solutions for decades, eliminating the ongoing costs of temporary accommodation and the social services required to support homeless families. Instead, the government has chosen a path that will generate higher long-term costs while inflicting maximum harm on vulnerable families.

Research from the University of Otago estimated in 2016 that keeping someone homeless costs the government $65,000 annually through mental health services, police costs, and emergency interventions. Adjusting for inflation and current service costs, this figure likely exceeds $85,000 per person today. With over 112,000 people experiencing severe housing deprivation, the government is choosing to perpetuate a system that costs billions annually rather than invest in permanent housing solutions that would cost a fraction of that amount over time.

 

In 2016, The ODT reported:

Homeless 'costing $65,000 each'

Each person living on the street in New Zealand cost the Government around $65,000 a year, an inquiry into homelessness has heard.

Getting them off the streets and into secure housing could cost as little as $15,000, a University of Otago housing research organisation said.

Many mainstream media outlets have failed to cover this housing mismanagement properly. The NZ Herald's breathless reporting on the Rotorua development, complete with uncritical repetition of employment figures and government talking points, demonstrates a failure of basic journalistic scrutiny. Where is the analysis of these employment claims? Where is the context about the thousands of cancelled homes? This isn't journalism; it's stenography for a government that needs to be challenged and held to account.

The cancellation of essential housing while celebrating token developments perfectly captures this government's approach to social policy. They manufacture small victories for media consumption while inflicting massive damage on at risk communities that need support. The 76 families who won't receive homes in Porirua East are not just statistics; they are New Zealanders who deserve better than a government that treats housing as a luxury rather than a fundamental necessity.

 

Last week, RNZ reported:

Kāinga Ora halts hundreds of housing developments, sells vacant land

State housing provider Kāinga Ora is halting hundreds of housing developments which would have delivered nearly 3500 homes, and selling a fifth of its vacant land.

The agency's chief executive Matt Crockett said on Thursday the "critical step" in its reset plan would see it write down up to $220 million.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop ordered Kāinga Ora to deliver a turnaround plan that would ensure financial sustainability.

Christopher Luxon and his incompetent ministers should be required to explain to every family on the social housing waiting list why their housing needs aren't as important as tax breaks for landlords and tax cuts for the wealthy. They should explain why thousands of construction jobs are less valuable than their commitment to austerity for the poor. Most importantly, they should explain why increasing homelessness is an acceptable price for their destructive political agenda that appears to only be concerned with propping up an overheated housing market and making the wealthy even richer.

New Zealand's housing crisis demands serious solutions, not public relations exercises disguised as policy. We deserve better than this calculated abandonment, and New Zealand deserves a government that prioritises housing families over maintaining a system that is continuously increasing inequality.

RBNZ Cuts OCR as Mortgage Defaults Loom

I’m unsure if you’re aware, but the New Zealand housing market is currently teetering on a knife-edge, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) knows it. With mortgage stress and arrears creeping up, compounded by sluggish sales and stagnant wages, the spectre of defaults threatens to drag house prices down. Despite the government claiming that the RBNZ’s latest Official Cash Rate (OCR) cut to 3.25% is because of their good economic management, it's really a desperate bid to keep the economy, reliant on people joining the ponzi scheme of a overinflated house prices, from tanking.

First, mortgage stress is real and growing. Back in November 2023, the RBNZ’s Financial Stability Report warned that non-performing housing loans, those over 90 days past due or impaired, would nearly double from 0.4% to 0.7% by March 2025. That’s $1.3 billion in troubled loans already. Centrix data from March 2025 confirms arrears are at their highest since 2017, with a 12% year-on-year increase in mortgage delinquencies. Borrowers who took out hefty loans in 2020-2021, often exceeding seven times their income, are spending half their gross earnings on repayments.

If these borrowers start defaulting en masse, house prices could take a hit. The logic is simple: defaults force sales, flooding the market with properties and driving prices down, which is exactly what the RBNZ and government doesn’t want to happen. CoreLogic’s December 2024 Housing Chart Pack shows house prices already fell 5% since February 2024, with listings 25% above the five-year average.

Economists like those at Squirrel predict a flat market in 2024 but warn prices could dip further in less desirable areas. A 20% peak-to-trough drop, as forecasted by Capital Economics in 2022, isn’t off the table if defaults spike. Yet, the RBNZ claims the financial system is robust, based on outdated data showing arrears still below the 1.2% seen during the 2009 GFC, as if this is a good benchmark.

On Wednesday, RNZ reported:

 

Reserve Bank drops OCR by 25 basis points to 3.25 percent

Finance Minister Nicola Willis said their economic decisions had contributed to the cut, opposed to the last Labour-led government.

"What we know for a fact is that the last government's extremely high spending levels added fuel on the inflation fire and let inflation get up over 7 percent" she said.

"We now have inflation back in band and that's partly because we've taken such a more responsible approach to spending."

She said the government's operating allowance was the lowest in a decade, which showed a prudent approach.

"Governments can make things a lot worse when it comes to inflation in interest rates, and we've taken it upon ourselves to make things better," she said.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis is trying to remain calm while scrambling to prop up the housing market. She’s also brazenly taking credit for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s independent decision to slash the OCR. This move, driven by the RBNZ’s concern over a potential housing bubble burst, has little to do with coalition policy and everything to do with shielding the economy from a deluge of forced sales.

Now don't get me wrong. House prices do need to come down. But the government’s not willing to let that happen in a controlled manner. Instead they're loosening planning regulations, as touted in their 2024 housing agenda, which risks inflating prices further rather than addressing affordability, with the 2025 Demographia report showing New Zealand’s housing remains among the world’s least affordable. This is only going to make things worse, with estimates showing 24,000-36,000 households were already under significant mortgage stress in 2024, with numbers likely higher in 2025 due to persistent affordability pressures and softening labor markets.

Obviously the government putting pressure on wages while prices remain overinflated, causing fewer sales, isn’t helping to get New Zealand back on track. House sales are at their lowest since 2011, down to under 60,000 annually in February 2023, per Infometrics. CoreLogic notes a 10% drop below typical seasonal sales in November 2024. Meanwhile, net migration boosts demand but also suppresses wage growth by expanding the labour pool, as ANZ pointed out in April 2025. Budget 2025 projects a 1.5% wage rise over the long term, but that’s cold comfort when households saving for or paying off mortgages are already financially stretched.

In March, RNZ reported:

Number of people behind on mortages at 8-year high

The number of people falling behind in mortgage payments has hit levels not seen since 2017, according to credit agency Centrix.

Its January credit report indicates mortgage arrears were at an eight-year high, with personal loans, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL), retail energy and telco arrears on the rise.

Consumer credit defaults also increased by 42 percent on the year earlier, while personal insolvencies showed signs of an uptick, but remained below historical levels.

The RBNZ’s OCR cuts, down from 5.5% in August 2024 to 3.25% now, are a response to this grim reality. They’re banking on lower rates (one-year fixed at 5.31%, per Canstar) to ease borrower pain and stimulate sales. But with global uncertainties like U.S. trade tariffs looming, more companies closing their doors and lower wages biting, the RBNZ’s path to a “neutral” 3% OCR by mid-2025 might not be enough to stop the slide. The housing market’s not collapsing just yet, but without real wage growth and with thousands of defaults lurking, the RBNZ and government are playing a very dangerous game.

Dunedin Mayor Calls On Government To Help Homeless

Last week, a fire tore through a homeless camp at Dunedin’s Oval, destroying tents and makeshift shelters in a stark reminder of New Zealand’s soul-destroying housing crisis. This isn’t just a tragedy, it’s a predictable outcome of the Coalition of Chaos’s reckless policies, which have gutted funding for emergency accommodation and homelessness initiatives while leaving vulnerable Kiwis to fend for themselves.

Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich lamented the blaze, pointing the finger at the government’s failure to fund proper housing solutions. He’s right of course, but let’s not kid ourselves: this is a crisis engineered by National and its mates, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop leading the charge in dismantling the state’s role in providing safe and affordable housing for all New Zealanders.


On Friday, Scoop reported:

 

Mayor: Govt Funding Needed To Help Tackle Homelessness

Mayor of Dunedin Jules Radich says a fire which burnt through homeless people’s shelters at the Oval sportsground underscores the urgent need for government action.

The fire swept through tents and a temporary wooden structure at the edge of the Oval this morning, and it was just fortunate there were no serious injuries or deaths, Mayor Radich says.

“We could have been waking up to news of a fatality, and I’m extremely relieved that isn’t the case, but this morning’s fire should put the government on notice that action is needed.

“Winter is coming, and with it the cold temperatures that will only make a bad situation worse for our homeless community.”

Radich called for government funding to support facilities like the proposed Aaron Lodge hub, a plan torpedoed by Bishop himself, who dismissed it as “not viable.” This is the same Bishop who’s overseen the dismantling of state house builds, in Dunedin especially, while the city’s homeless population balloons to over 3,200. 11 state houses over three years is evidently not enough. Meanwhile, Bishop’s crowing about “efficiency” and “market solutions” as he slashes Kāinga Ora’s budget and prioritises making private developers even richer.

The result of the National led government essentially breaking the social contract? A housing crisis that’s pushing people onto the streets and into tents to live in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. It’s not just incompetence; it’s a deliberate choice to abandon those most in need and ignore the substantial evidence that market solutions haven’t and aren’t going to work to fix New Zealand’s housing crisis.

The Coalition’s tightened eligibility for emergency housing has already been linked to a surge in rough sleeping, with frontline workers and Labour’s Carmel Sepuloni warning that families are being kicked out of motels with nowhere to go. The Salvation Army’s damning report earlier this year pinned rising street homelessness squarely on the governments callous cuts. Yet Bishop has the gall to claim homelessness hasn’t risen, based on nothing more than “anecdotal reports” and the fact that the government doesn’t gather official stats.

This is a government that’s not just out of touch with reality, it’s actively making things worse. By strangling funding for emergency accommodation and social housing, they’re ensuring more people end up in dangerous, makeshift camps like the one at the Oval. When propane tanks are exploding and tents are burning, it’s only a matter of time before we’re mourning lives lost.

Make no bones about it, the housing crisis is about life and death. The OECD ranks New Zealand among the worst developed nations for homelessness, and that was before Bishop’s wrecking ball hit social and emergency housing. In effect, the Coalition of Chaos’ obsession with austerity and market dogma is a death sentence for the vulnerable.

We need urgent action: a massive boost in state house construction, restored funding for emergency housing, and real support for councils like Dunedin’s to build transitional facilities without any further delays. Anything less is complicity in a crisis that’s already claiming lives from exposure and despair. Bishop and his Coalition of Chaos cronies need to wake up before more Kiwis pay the ultimate price for the government’s numerous housing failures.

National’s Betrayal of Renters and First-Time Buyers

It's definitely not a renters market in New Zealand, as reported by 1 News last night. In fact the housing crisis has metastasised into a full-blown catastrophe in 2025, and the National Party Government’s policies are pouring petrol on the flames. Renters are being crushed under skyrocketing costs, first-time buyers are locked out of the market, and the dream of homeownership is a cruel mirage for an entire generation of Kiwis.

National’s approach, slashing state house construction and implementing policies that inflate property prices, isn't just failing; it’s a deliberate middle finger to anyone who isn’t already a property owner.

In 2024, the government proudly announced a “streamlined” housing strategy, which translated to gutting funding for public housing and slowing new builds to a trickle. According to recent data, state house construction has plummeted by 40% since 2022, with only 1,200 new units completed last year, all of which were funded by the previous government. 

Meanwhile, private sector builds are stagnating, hampered by National’s deregulatory zeal, which has enriched developers but done zilch to increase supply. The result? A housing shortage so acute that Auckland’s median house price has surged to $1.4 million, and rents have spiked 12% in 18 months. For the average renter, that’s $150 more per week...money most don’t have.

National’s excuse? “Market efficiency.” They’ve doubled down on tax breaks for property investors and loosened rules for speculative developments, claiming it’ll “unlock supply.” Bollocks. These policies have turbocharged demand from cashed-up landlords and overseas buyers, while Kiwi first-time buyers (already crippled by stagnant wages and 7% mortgage rates) are left out n the cold. The government’s refusal to rein in investor tax loopholes or introduce a capital gains tax is a choice, not an oversight. It’s a choice to prioritise the wealthy over the desperate.

Then there’s the gutting of tenant protections. National’s rollback of Labour’s rental reforms, namely no-cause evictions, has left renters at the mercy of landlords who can jack up prices or kick them out on a whim. Stories abound of families forced onto the streets or into cars as rental stock dwindles. The government’s response? A shrug and a vague promise of “more consultation.” Meanwhile, their cuts to social services mean homelessness is spiking.

On Thursday, RNZ reported:

The billions spent on NZ’s accommodation supplement is failing to make rent affordable – so what will?

 

...

This study also picked up potential signs of landlords inflating the rents for tenants receiving subsidies. This is known as "subsidy capturing". On average, middle-income tenants receiving the accommodation supplement paid NZ$539.40 per week in rent in 2023. Non-recipients paid $502.90. That's a 7.3 percent difference.

Further research is needed to determine whether this discrepancy is due to rent inflation or differences in housing quality. But the finding aligns with international studies showing that subsidies can unintentionally drive up market rents.

If landlords are capturing part of the subsidy by increasing rents, then the benefit meant for vulnerable tenants is being diluted.

First-time buyers aren’t faring any better. National’s scrapping of shared equity schemes and their half-arsed “infrastructure funding” has left councils unable to support new developments. The much-hyped Fast-Track Approvals Act has delivered luxury apartments for the elite, not affordable homes for the masses. Kāinga Ora, once a beacon of hope, is now a shadow of its former self, starved of funds and ambition.

This isn’t incompetence; it’s class warfare. National’s policies are engineered to keep property prices sky-high, protecting their donor base of developers and landlords while screwing over everyone else. Renters and first-time buyers deserve better than this rigged game. It’s time for a government that builds homes, not excuses...one that puts people over profits. Until then, the housing crisis will keep burning, and National will keep fiddling like nothing's wrong.

Luxon Turns A Blind Eye to Homelessness

New Zealand’s housing crisis is a sad indictment on the failures of right wing neoliberalism, and the National Party, under Chris Luxon’s shaky leadership, is trying to simply ignore it. The numbers don’t lie: Census data from 2023 revealed 112,496 Kiwis were severely housing deprived...couch-surfing, car-sleeping, or roughing it on the streets. That’s a national disgrace, and National’s response? Deny and deflect. Luxon’s government is failing to address homelessness, and their housing policies are a shambles that’s pushing vulnerable New Zealanders further into the margins.

National needs to face the music. Housing Minister Chris Bishop’s grand “turnaround plan” for Kāinga Ora involves cancelling thousands of new builds and flogging off 900 social homes a year to his wealthy mates while claiming it’ll "refocus" the agency on being a landlord. Meanwhile, building consents for new homes dropped 24% in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to Statistics New Zealand. So, fewer homes are being built while Bishop sells the silverware. That’s not a plan; it’s a complete surrender to the housing crisis.

The Salvation Army has sounded the alarm, linking tightened emergency housing criteria to a 53% spike in rough sleeping in Auckland. Yet Luxon, in a March 2025 RNZ interview, had the gall to reject any connection between his government’s policies and rising homelessness, saying, “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.” But instead of working to help Kiwis, National is busy working to dismantle the safety net.

 

Today, the Post reported:

PM avoids talk about homeless numbers in New Plymouth

The Government has been severely criticised by New Plymouth mayor Neil Holdom about a lack of involvement or willingness to find or fund a solution when it came to the growing number of rough sleepers in the central business district and related antisocial behaviour.

A lack of action has led the council to put $800,000 towards a homeless shelter at New Plymouth’s YMCA in an attempt to ease the situation.

When asked about the Government’s position, Luxon handed the problem over to New Plymouth MP David MacLeod to speak about it.

“I am aware of it,” Luxon said after an invite-only Taranaki Chamber of Commerce event at the Plymouth Hotel.

Instead, Luxon spoke about the Government’s housing record, which he said meant rental prices had not increased during the term.

 

Luxon’s corporate polish can’t mask his disconnect. This is a man who, in 2020, rallied against a 54-home development in Howick, whining about preserving single-dwelling zones. Now he’s PM, and that NIMBY streak hasn’t faded…he’s just outsourced it to a party that’s gutting social housing while pretending it’s reform. His coalition’s obsession with deregulation and privatization, as seen in their push for wealthy foreign investors to buy up Aotearoa, reeks of prioritizing the elite over everyday hardworking Kiwis.

The human cost is gut-wrenching. Ihi Research found four out of five homeless women in Aotearoa are Māori, some as young as 15. Auckland City Mission reports over 200 women over 55 are waiting for social housing...and they're the lucky ones who were allowed onto the wait list. Under National, most housing deprived people get turned away. These aren’t just stats...they’re lives unraveling while Luxon plays at a CEO whose too important to give a damn, dodging accountability while waffling on about how wonderful everything is. He's all talk. His claim that it’s “unacceptable” for kids to grow up in motels rings hollow when National's policies are kicking families onto the street and offering them tents.

Luxon’s stupidly banking on Kiwis not noticing all those new homeless people out there. His March 2025 dismissal of polls showing Labour’s Chris Hipkins overtaking him as preferred PM...where he shrugged, “I’m focused on Kiwis, not polls”...is a tired old worn out dodge. Focused on Kiwis? Tell that to the tens of thousands of homeless Kiwis doing it tough. This isn’t leadership; it’s willful ignorance.

National’s housing failures are a betrayal of the most vulnerable, and Luxon’s refusal to own it is a stain on his hopefully short tenure. Time to wake up, Chris, before more Kiwis pay the price for your apathy and disdain for the poor.

People could live in those ghost houses, Jacinda Ardern

You can understand why Jacinda Ardern is somewhat hesitant to do more about tackling the housing crisis. After all, making houses affordable would effectively mean that billions of dollars of paper wealth would be wiped from people's books. And with a considerably larger percentage of the voting public owning property compared to those renting, it really just comes down to a numbers game.

It’s also of concern that much of the economic growth we see in New Zealand is because of a white hot housing market, which along with their own personal vested interests, is likely a major reason most politicians aren't interested in implementing any robust policy initiatives that could cool things down.

One of the main drivers of the housing crisis, which economist Bernard Hickey now describes as a catastrophe, is the large amount of dwellings in New Zealand that are empty. The latest census put the figure at 200,000 houses, which is a hell of a lot of property to just leave vacant. So why isn’t the Government doing more to fix this major problem?

On Monday, Newshub reported:

Jacinda Ardern not convinced by 'ghost home' concerns despite data showing 40,000 vacant in Auckland

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is not convinced by "ghost home" concerns despite Census data from 2018 showing nearly 40,000 vacant houses in Auckland. 

At the 2018 census, there were nearly 1.9 million dwellings in New Zealand. Nearly 200,000 of those were unoccupied. The vast majority, 33,360, were in Auckland. The number of vacant homes rose from 6.6 percent in 2013 to 7.3 percent. 

It led Auckland Mayor Phil Goff to explore the idea of filling vacant houses with homeless tenants, or with nurses, police and other essential workers. But nothing concrete came of it. The Māori Party meanwhile campaigned on slapping owners of empty homes with taxes. 

An empty house levy would be one of the best ways to stop the trend of well-to-do people buying up houses that they don't plan to live in. And despite their fears, such a tax isn’t the political death knell that Labour believes it to be.

That’s because the current Government has already upset the landed gentry with their healthy homes standards and other worthwhile housing initiatives. Any further loss of support would therefore be minimal if some substantial policies were enacted to deter people from continuing to bank on investment property, which is one of the main reasons housing has become so unaffordable in New Zealand.

But Ardern, with the ultimate decision-making power, doesn't seem too concerned about it, telling The AM Show on Monday she's spoken with local councils to get an idea of whether these "ghost homes" are contributing to the housing crisis. 

"I've gone to local government and said, 'Can you quantify how many vacant homes we have, do you see this as the issue?' And from the councils' perspective, their view wasn't that we had a large-scale problem with vacant housing." 

Duncan Garner, host of The AM Show, told Ardern the local councils she spoke to are "dreamers", because the data came from the official Census. 

"The Census isn't able to then quantify whether or not, for instance, that's someone who's genuinely not consistently using the home," Ardern responded. "We have asked that question of those who are most able to tell us."

Ardern said councils aren't the only ones looking into the issue. She said consultancy business The People Place has also looked into whether ghost homes are contributing to the housing crisis in Hamilton. 

"From their perspectives, they haven't viewed that as being a major contributing factor. However, we've continued to ask those who would know."

The Prime Minister is entirely wrong here. Firstly, a Human Relations firm from Parnell aren't the people to decide if there's a problem with vacant houses in Hamilton. Furthermore, when a census is taken, a property can be visited numerous times to determine whether it’s inhabited. The census is also the only data available, so it should therefore be relied on.

Jacinda Ardern is basically saying that the census takers don’t know how to tell if a house is empty or not, which would pour cold water on the entire census process and therefore all the Government decisions based from it.

"The second question becomes, OK, if people have got vacant houses, what do you then do? So Duncan, what are you proposing, that we tell people they can't own a second home and then not use it?" Ardern said. 

Garner said as Prime Minister, she should have the solutions, not him. 

"It is a fair question to say, if we think we identify that someone holds a second property that they are not utilising regularly, what do you then do?" Ardern said. 

"At that point, the only solutions you see in other countries is that they put in tax disincentives. I want to know that that is genuinely a contributing factor before we would consider some of those options, and at the moment, when we've gone to those who may know, they've said that they don't believe that that's been the largest factor for them.

"In fact, I remember when I asked that question of local government, they said, 'Actually, we think issues like covenants are more of an issue for us locally than people sitting on vacant properties'."

The Prime Minister dismissing census data in favour of anecdotal evidence from councils, who have a financial incentive to keep the housing crisis going, is all about the political ramifications of implementing a tax on empty houses. It has nothing to do with doing what is best for New Zealand, and everything to do with Labour choosing to placate wealthy homeowners to ensure their re-election.

Unfortunately Ardern displayed a similar biased approach in the lead up to the cannabis and euthanasia referendums. On one hand she openly supported people being able to choose to end their own life, but on the other she wouldn’t even let the public know which way she was going to vote on legalising cannabis, just in case it influenced that referendums outcome.

This had nothing to do with pragmatism and everything to do with political expediency. 

Of course the current Government is removing hurdles to ensure developers can build more houses. They’ve also directly or been financially involved in assisting around 9117 new public houses to be built since June 2018. But this will only maintain the status quo and in no way put any downward pressure on house prices in New Zealand, which will likely continue to be the most unaffordable in the developed world even with a left-wing Government in power.

For those who say Aotearoa-NZ's housing affordability catastrophe (long past a crisis) is no worse than elsewhere, here's Economist data-$$$ showing real house prices here have risen 259% in real terms since 1989, while Australia's rose 149% and UK's 98%. https://t.co/17bNtct9VT pic.twitter.com/lMhaBmsYCY

— Bernard Hickey (@bernardchickey) August 2, 2021

Minto teams up with National's Nicola Willis

It would be easy to get a bit despondent about politics sometimes, especially when you see some of the stats that get bandied about. The numbers themselves don’t lie and tell of a country that has been badly served by neoliberal politicians dead set on decimating our social services through their austerity budgets.

Much of New Zealand’s critical infrastructure including but not limited to its housing and hospitals have been detrimentally affected by the budget cuts of various backwards thinking administrations, meaning that our health and wellbeing indicators often remain stubbornly in the red.

Right wing politicians often hold these numbers aloft and cry crocodile tears about a situation that they themselves helped create. And once in a while a gullible left wing activist also joins in with the right wing's disingenuous propaganda. A classic example of this occurred yesterday when long time campaigner John Minto echoed National Party MP Nicola Willis' complaint about the Government putting more homeless people into motels.

Here's Nicola Willis tweeting:

The Prime Minister just claimed in question time that the 4000 children being raised in motels were previously living in cars.

This is a farcical claim.

Labour’s housing policies are failing and the PM has nothing to offer except a ridiculous attempt to blame National.

— Nicola Willis (@NicolaWillisMP) July 6, 2021

And here’s Minto on The Daily blog:

The government has no plans to address the housing crisis for low-income New Zealanders

An update on the number of children living in motels by RNZ’s Checkpoint programme should come as no surprise. The programme found an increase in 480 children in the three months from December 2020 to 31 March this year. Things are getting worse in housing for low-income New Zealanders.

Like Willis, Minto fails to mention that much of this increase is likely due to slumlords continuing to evict tenants because they don’t want to adhere to the Government's healthy homes standards. The increase is also likely, as the PM asserts, due to the Government moving families out of cars and into more suitable accommodation such as motels.

Since Labour was elected in 2017 the number on the state house waiting list has increased from just 5,000 to over 23,000 so the net number of state houses being built will not even keep up with the yearly increases in demand, let along eat into the 23,000 backlog.

Now don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for John Minto. But here again he omits an important piece of information. The Labour led Government lowered the criteria for those applying for emergency and state housing, meaning that many more Kiwis became eligible to go onto the waiting lists.

Surely he hasn’t forgotten that under the last National led Government, and more precisely Housing Minister Phil Heatley, people in need of housing weren’t even allowed onto the Housing Corporation's waiting list? One of the first things National did was to make the criteria more strict, which directly resulted in 82 percent of applicants being removed from the HCNZ waiting list by July 2011.

Andrew McKenzie also explained that after that 2017 election, Kainga Ora recommended an increase in state house building from 1600 per year to 2,000 per year but Labour did not accept the recommendation. Yes, you read that correctly – Labour decided to simply continue building state houses at the same rate as the previous National government.

In fact over the last four years of Labour in government, the total number of state houses for rent has remained almost static.

If you were to take these criticisms at face value, you would think that the current Government isn’t doing anything at all to try and fix the housing crisis. However both Willis and Minto are incorrect in most of their assertions about Labour’s current housing policies. 

Firstly, the number of state rentals has increased by 4649 beds since September 2017 according to Kāinga Ora’s housing stats. And according to the Government’s Housing Dashboard there are 4705 new state houses since June 2018.

This is in contrast to the last National led Government who demolished 256 state houses and increased the number of vacant properties by a whopping 471 by 2011. At the end of their first term in government, National had sold off another 548 state houses, many into private ownership for below market rates.

Over the entire nine long years of National's failed administration where John Key continuously claimed that there wasn’t any housing crisis to worry about, the number of state houses declined by a whopping 6000. How on earth is that comparable to Labour building 4705 new state houses in just over three years?

So the accusation that Labour has carried on where National left off is utterly and categorically wrong! Are they doing enough? Of course not! But likening the current administrations housing policies to National’s austerity and dare I say corruption is akin to political whitewashing! And that’s not something anybody who wants to hold past or present Government's to account should be doing.

Is Labour in denial about the housing crisis?

There’s no escaping the fact that New Zealand has the least affordable housing in the world. Not only are young Kiwi families being locked out of home ownership, because wages are low in comparison to our white hot housing market, but renters are also feeling the pinch as speculators increase rents to invest in even more properties and offset future costs.

It’s a dire scenario that’s resulting in not just housing unaffordability, but also increased homelessness, which will ensure New Zealand continues to rank as one of the most unequal countries in the world. The end result of course is a decrease in owner occupied buildings, which studies have shown is the bedrock of any functioning society.

So what’s the Government doing about it? Well not a hell of a lot if the numbers are anything to go by. Sure, Labour extended the bright-line test and made some changes to investor tax rules. They've also built around 8645 houses since June 2018. But this has had little to no effect on housing affordability and, it appears, a detrimental effect on the rental housing market.

On March 23, Stuff reported:

Rents hit new highs in the provinces as Covid-19 increases popularity of remote working

Rents surged to new highs in the provinces in February as more people turned to remote working since Covid-19.

The national median weekly rent increased 1.9 per cent to $530 from February last year, with gains in all regions, according to the latest Trade Me Rental Price Index. The biggest gains were in Manawatu/Whanganui, up 16 per cent, Hawke’s Bay, up 15 per cent, and Taranaki, up 13 per cent.

Meanwhile the accommodation supplement hasn’t increased at all.

A shortage of housing has pushed up house prices and increased demand for rental properties, which has pushed up prices in that market. Increases in rents have outstripped gains in income, prompting concern about what level of increase is reasonable, and spurred demand for rent controls.

It's pretty evident that realtors and speculators have by and large made good on their threat to evict tenants en masse because the Government implemented its healthy homes standards. The net result of course is an increase in homeless people right across New Zealand.

On Saturday, the NZ Herald reported:

Housing crisis: Whangārei pair living in park trespassed as homelessness skyrockets

Whangārei rough sleepers are facing trespass notices amid a rapid rise in homelessness.

This week, RNZ revealed new figures showing the city's homeless population had increased from 21 people in 2018 to 293 in 2020.

The figures were part of a Northland District Health Board report released this week.

It said "a very high proportion" of homeless were Māori and that was "reinforcing and extending existing inequities" but it was "unlikely there is sufficient transitional housing in Northland to meet the need".

It was obvious to everyone but the Government that if realtors and investors were given any leeway to squeeze more money out of housing, they would. An increase in homelessness likely wasn’t a concern to them at all. In fact this works in their favour because people who’re caught in the rental poverty trap are less likely to come forward about their substandard rentals or abusive landlords for fear of becoming homeless.

It’s a catch twenty-two situation being that the Government is relying on tenants to inform them about any failure to comply with the healthy homes standards as well, which basically renders the policy toothless! Obviously there needs to be inspectors to ensure compliance, because the industry simply won’t regulate itself to any degree that's required.

So not only are rental properties going to be left vacant or dilapidated, which will cause an increase in poverty related crime and ill-health, the Government also loses out because tenants are effectively investing more money into non-productive assets on behalf of their landlords. This is the exact opposite of what the Labour Party apparently intended before it came to power, and despite the facts piling up, they’re still only willing to tinker around the edges.

Last week, Stuff reported:

Investor tax rule changes: Government 'will take action' if rents spike, Grant Robertson says

The Government “will take action if necessary” should investors hike rents to offset the effect of tax rule changes.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson issued the warning after introducing interest deductibility rule changes on March 23, which take away investors’ ability to offset home loan interest costs against rental income.

…

Robertson would not comment on whether he would consider national or targetted rental increase caps if landlords did hike prices.

He said for the year to February 2021, Stats NZ recorded rental price increases of 3 percent.

“We will be monitoring the impact on the rental market closely and we will take action if necessary.

“Tenants can also go to the Tenancy Tribunal if they think their rent is too expensive and not in line with the market to request a rent reduction.

So we’re back to the Government expecting tenants to piss their landlords off and potentially end up on the street. I mean doesn’t Robertson know that all the real estate agencies now keep a database of personal information on renters, which is likely being used to penalise anybody who tries to stand up for their rights?

“It is also worth noting that the changes to interest deductibility rules for current landlords are being phased in over a four-year period so any substantial price increases would not be justifiable in any event.”

It might not be justified, but it is happening. Grant Robertson’s language here clearly shows that he’s in denial about what's occurring in the rental housing market. It’s not a question of “if landlords hike prices” because they already have and will continue to do so well above anything that is justifiable.

We saw a similar blasé approach from the Prime Minister when she claimed that the banks were just speculating about rents increasing substantially due to a backlash because of the changes to investor tax rules.

Jacinda Ardern might claim to be watching the numbers closely in terms of rents compared to wage growth, but it’s clear that her eye has gone off the ball. With rents increasing in some areas by a whopping 16 percent, while wage growth is at 2.6 percent, the only recourse the Government logically has is a cap on rental increases. The longer they delay, the worse things will get not just in terms of quality of life for tenants, but also in terms of homelessness and the housing crisis in general.

Labour can simply kiss any benefits from their poverty reduction policies goodbye if they don't get housing right.

The Government should go even further to implement an Empty House Levy to penalise those speculators who've made their tenants homeless instead of fixing their substandard properties. This would also likely reduce the some 200,000 empty houses that are gathering dust in New Zealand at the moment. Otherwise Labour risks the housing crisis becoming its Achilles heel at the next election, even though they’re slowly inching forward in the right direction.

More needs to be done about the slumlords

It always amazes me to see the illogical arguments made by real estate industry insiders when they’re complaining about any type of housing sector regulation. They simply don't seem to care if their arguments make any sense or whether their unbound greed is worsening an already terrible housing crisis that appears to have no end in sight.

When Healthy Homes Standards were first announced for instance a large number of slumlords were so incensed with the Government’s plan to make rental houses healthier that they threatened to leave their properties empty instead of fixing them up. 

Nearly four years on from the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act passing into law, plus a number of other housing policy initiatives, and that odious threat has now unfortunately become reality for many struggling New Zealanders. 

Yesterday, the NZ Herald (Paywalled) reported:

Landlords selling up in the Bay of Plenty sparking fears of future slums

Some landlords are selling up after the introduction of new regulations and property managers warn the emergence of developers in the marketplace could open the door to future slums.

…

No exact figures were available but data from Tenancy Services shows in the Bay of Plenty active bond numbers had dropped by 177 in one year.

Meanwhile, Trade Me statistics revealed demand for rental properties across the region had consistently outweighed supply.

Core Logic said the market share for mortgaged investors in both Tauranga and Rotorua had held but acknowledged some landlords would have no choice but to sell if they could not cover their higher tax bills.

Why am I not surprised that most Bay of Plenty slumlords who emptied their rental properties haven't got any mortgages to pay, which just goes to show what selfish pricks they really are. It also makes the argument that many landlords are getting out of the market because of low returns highly questionable. Owning a rental without a mortgage is incredibly lucrative and something most Kiwis can only dream of.

One landlord, who had investment properties for 23 years, said she would be selling off most of her portfolio after calculated returns of .7 per cent due to ''ridiculous'' government regulations and increased costs.

Well cry me a river. Perhaps if this landlord had maintained her numerous properties properly she wouldn’t now be having such large overheads? But instead of using some of the returns she received over 23 long years of largely untaxed income, this slumlord is likely to just throw families out onto the street to fend for themselves.

So bereft of any conscience that they simply don’t care if their fellow Kiwis stay warm and dry during winter, many slumlords would rather not receive rent from people they often view as inferior just to try and teach the Labour led Government a lesson. In effect they’re willing to make people homeless because in some cases the slumlords' balance sheets won't look so rosy if they adhere to the Government's regulations.

It's a huge middle finger to the once egalitarian country we used to enjoy. In fact nothing says fuck you poor person more than an empty house that makes more capital gains each year than most DINK's yearly earnings combined. But if that wasn’t bad enough, the landlords are now trying to blame developers and not just renters for the large amount of dilapidated rental houses that remain empty in New Zealand.

Tauranga Rentals owner Dan Lusby said he was aware of private developers who had built apartments with no decks or outside areas that had become magnets for gangs and other trouble.

In his view, these developers were ''all about the money'' and they had ''little empathy for tenants''.

''They will sell to one investor'' and he feared this could set a precedent and lead to slum blocks.

 

In my opinion this is a damn good reason for the Government to get even tougher on slumlords. An empty house levy should be implemented to try to ensure realtors and slumlords don’t continue to chuck tenants out onto the street. It could also go some way in persuading former landlords to actually sell their properties to first homebuyers instead of just leaving them to rack and ruin.

After all, the only thing slumlords really care about is money. Their cold dead hearts and unfettered arrogance means that they will never accept any responsibility for our dilapidated housing stock or the some 200,000 empty houses that are going to waste across Aotearoa. Instead, they will search for anyone but themselves to blame while continuing to denigrate and evict some of the most vulnerable people in our so-called society.

Rotorua Property Investors Association president Debbie Van Den Broek said some landlords were disillusioned.

''It has just become too difficult, too unpleasant, and not worth the effort. Especially for beginners.''

Surely Den Broek isn’t claiming that there’s no profit to be made from rental properties? What on earth does she think is largely driving the housing crisis? It’s the continued reinvestment of rental profits into more property by speculators that is essentially closing renters and first homebuyers out of the market.

She said renters most at risk of any fallout would be families and people with pets.

 

So renters aren't allowed pets or children now?

 

Van Den Broek acknowledged it was great to see first-home buyers on the property ladder but not everyone had a deposit.

In her view, only the Government had the ability to not make a profit on providing rental accommodation ''as they have their own personal bottomless 'Give a Little Page' being the taxpayer''.

Top landlord for 2009 - Debbie Van Den Broek

Where the hell does Den Broek think most of the money that goes into landlords' bank accounts comes from? The bottomless pit of cash she describes, i.e. the public purse, is exactly where most realtors' wealth originates, particularly in lower socio economic areas where the disparity between rents and incomes is extreme.

What this all shows is that the landed gentry will do and say anything to try and safeguard the lifestyles they've become accustomed to at the expense of the poor. If they have to evict numerous tenants and leave houses empty to ensure a short supply of rentals, thus pushing up prices, then that’s exactly what they'll do.

This underhanded tactic also provides the opposition with ammunition to throw at the Government. It's a double-edged sword however that will likely mean everybody loses out eventually, but especially in the short term for the many thousands of renters and people looking for their first home who are fast losing any hope of ever having a secure, healthy and safe place to call their own.