It is a national disgrace that 6,000 Kiwis are being accommodated in motels, and a further 7,000 were in transitional housing, camping grounds, boarding houses, and other temporary accommodation.

Another 31,000 are staying with others in a severely crowded dwelling.

Even middle income earners are finding it difficult to afford an accessible and decent home with often 60 to 80 percent of household income going on paying the rent.

“The result is not just a housing crisis, it is a human rights crisis of significant proportions” according to UN Special Rapporteur, Leilani Farha.

The country’s snowballing housing crisis has been obvious to everyone except National and Labour who have paid no more than lip service to it.

Labour claiming it has built more houses than National and National claiming it will replace the RMA are simply examples of a continuing litany of words instead of action.

Labour’s greatest Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, would be weeping tears of disappointment at his party’s feeble attempts to tackle the housing crisis.

Under Savage, Labour built 5,000 state houses in four years from 1935 to 1939, and 30,000 by 1949, financed by Reserve Bank credit.

He used the Reserve Bank to create the credit necessary to rebuild the nation, appointing John A Lee as housing under-secretary and got stuck in to the task of building state houses.

As the 1949 Ministry of Works report ‘State Housing in New Zealand’ recorded:-

“To finance its comprehensive proposals, the Government… used Reserve Bank credit……The sums advanced by the Reserve Bank were not subscribed or underwritten by other financial institutions. This action showed the Government’s intention to ……use the country’s credit in creating new assets for the country”.

The Reserve Bank is currently creating $100 billion dollars to buy government IOU’s (bonds) off banks and rich investors at a premium that’s going to cost $11.1 billion over the three years.

That $11.1 billion should be going into building state houses along with some of the $100 billion the Bank is creating.

In addition to a substantial state house building programme, Social Credit would put in place a rent to own scheme, a programme of relocation grants that could be used a deposits on house purchases, and zero interest loans.

The detailed policy can be accessed here.

© Scoop Media