Alliance says wealthy MPs share in property boom while young and poor go to the wall

The Alliance Party says young and lower-income people are being slammed by out of control property prices.

Alliance Party President Victor Billot says that a recent report by Massey University shows houses are less affordable now than when studies began in 1989. Affordability of housing has been dropping for the last 4.5 years, according to the Massey University Property Foundation study, as housing prices rose faster than wages.

"Housing has now become about profits for investors, rather than about putting a roof over peoples heads. Our priorities are all wrong."

Mr Billot says the crisis shows the continuing growth of a class divide that threatens to create a large number of economically insecure people caught in a debt trap.

"The problem is that many MPs are wealthy property owners and investors, so they are happy to rake it in while the young and poor go to the wall."

He says the financial and social pressures on younger people and lower income families are enormous.

"People feel they have to buy a house in case prices go up even further, but many are over-extending themselves with mortgages and will be in serious trouble if there is a recession."

Mr Billot says that a younger generation are being drowned in debt that includes student loans, aggressively marketed credit facilities for cash and goods, and giant mortgages.

"People just sign on the dotted line because they feel they have no choice."

The Alliance Party says housing is a basic human right and has policies aimed at helping out young and low income New Zealanders get into their own homes.

The Alliance supports low-interest, no deposit loans for low income people to buy their own homes.

It wants to modernize existing State housing stock and build a large number of new State houses.

The Alliance would introduce capital gains taxes to dampen down speculation, and introduce rent controls and stronger tenancy protection to prevent exploitation of the poor.

It supports the provision of low-interest loans to Councils and other agencies which provide pensioner flats or housing for low-income workers and beneficiaries, providing that rents are set at less than 25% of household income.

The Alliance is opposed to the sale of council housing, and it wants to introduce subsidized insulation for privately owned homes.

ENDS

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