The Spinoff this morning has a horrific cartoon from the Side Eye about how people are being locked out of owning their own home. Along the way, it points out that the only people who benefit from this crisis are property investors, and that there's remarkably few of them: only 7100 people own more than 4 rental properties, against 1.4 million renters. And weirdly, our entire housing market is designed to benefit the former group, rather than the latter.
Why? Its not as if that's enough votes to matter (especially compared to 1.4 million). But you just need to look at who our MPs are, who they compare themselves to socially, and how many houses they own. Our MPs are basicly landlords and property speculators, and so they design policy to suit - and enrich - themselves. Solving this crisis the obvious way - taxing excess wealth, and building enormous numbers of houses to crash the property market and realise the human right of secure housing - would make them poorer and offend their friends and families, so is off the table. And so the voices of 1.4 million kiwis (and the millions more who want a fair society) don't matter.
As for how to solve it, well, those 1.4 million kiwis and their friends can vote. And we should use that weapon actively. Don't vote for house-hoarders, landlords, or speculators, Possibly, don't vote even for people who own a house. Throw the landlords out!
