Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Making it worse

We currently have not just a housing crisis, but a homelessness crisis, with people forced to sleep in garages or in cars due to unaffordable rents and gouging landlords. So naturally, National thinks that it is a perfect time to sell more state houses:
Hundreds of state and council homes north of Wellington that are almost all occupied are to go on the block for sale, with prospective buyers being lined up this week.

The government and Horowhenua District Council are looking to sell off 364 houses in a plan that will have information sessions for potential buyers held in Levin and Wellington this week.

The homes are almost all occupied, and their tenants are mostly the elderly, single people or single parents.


While they're officially seeking a community housing provider to purchase them, in the past almost all interest has been from banks and property developers. And their plan will be to improve the value of their new asset by booting out those tenants, bowling the houses, and building new palazzos for sale at a profit. Or just selling the existing home to speculators. Either way, it means people being made homeless, and the safety net which should protect them being removed.

This is not how you solve the homelessness crisis. Instead, it is how you make it worse. But National doesn't care about that. Instead, all they care about is getting out of the state housing business, wrecking the state's ability to help people by flicking it off to their cronies at bargain-basement rates. It is both corrupt and destructive. But isn't it so very, very National?