Press Release - Tāmaki Housing Group

06/03/15

For Immediate Use

Inhuman Experiment on State Housing Tenants

On the back of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) being taken to task for operating an unsafe work environment, MSD are also complicit in housing reforms experimenting with a failed and inhumane policy imported from the UK called Northgate Matching Programme.

This software will determine who will be allocated housing and where this housing will be, likely to be in undesirable areas due to state housing sitting on valuable land.

This programme, alongside the social housing reforms will have a catastrophic impact on 69,000 HNZ families and pensioners in council units.

In the UK the transfer of public housing to charities and other community housing providers under public-private partnerships has led to the privatisation of the housing stock and the increase of rents for the tenants that occupy them.

The Tāmaki Housing Group demands the reinstatement of HNZ to manage tenant allocations and all other matters. We also call on all social housing providers to place their self-interests at profiting from these reforms aside.

These policy shifts are argued to create more housing for those in need. These policy shifts, however, will destabilise the most vulnerable New Zealanders.

Moving state housing into the private market will only increase unaffordability. The only way to solve a housing crisis is to support the state housing struggle.

ENDS

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