Len Brown should man-up on Asian violence

“Violence against Asians has its roots in pent up anger and frustration across the 50 per cent of Aucklanders who cannot ever afford a home,” says John Palino.

“The liveable city concept that the Mayor has been touting for 6 years is actually the gentrification of metropolitan Auckland and is dependent upon forever increasing house prices.

“Middle and lower income Aucklanders are being forced out of locations near employment and transport, effectively removing any hope these residents have of one day living in the same suburbs where they grew up.

“They are angry and they feel alienated.

They can’t understand why in a growing economy and with better pay they can’t give their children the same opportunities they had.

“They are looking for people to blame and they hear reports of foreign buyers driving up prices.

“The people committing these assaults are criminals and will be caught.

But like anyone, they respond to opportunity and the kind of resentment which is building in this city because house price stress is giving these people the moral excuse to do what they are doing.

“That Mayor Brown is shocked to see this sort of thing going on beggars belief.

“Len Brown’s destructive policies are the real reason house prices are now so absurdly and unstably high.

He should man up and apologise for creating the environment for this to happen and Phil Goff should explicitly reject existing Council housing policy but he doesn’t.

“Increased land supply must be released so that low cost housing can be delivered.

“We’ve got to stop fuelling this idea that somehow Asians are to blame for high house prices and turn our attention to the real cause – the Auckland Council’s ideological approach to land supply,” said Palino.

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