there are more than 500,000 residential rental property owners in NZ and they own more than 1,500,000 residential rental properties. most of them are lusting and drooling for a National and/or Act government because they will be able to deduct mortgage interest from their rental incomes and they will not have to pay any capital income tax on their properties (although they do not have to on new builds at present). and they will be voters. National and Act policies will give them a colossal financial advantage over people purchasing a home for themself, and will reignite/relight/restart the raging inferno of increasing residential property prices.
I imagine that $90m subsidy—to help our largest polluter become a big-grown-up-company, with clean shoes and an ironed shirt, all ready for the big scary wide world of "capitalism"!—could have gone quite some way to slowing our transition to a #vanlife economy... After all, poor liddle Fonterra only made $1.1b in after-tax profit last year (plus another quarter of a billion selling Soprole). It's just so lucky we had some extra money in the government cheque account to give them a little leg up!
Wow. What can we do. This is terrible. The govt are to blame for the rent hikes. By the laws they put in place for landlords healthy homes and the no longer being able to claim a lot on your investment. To be clear I’m not a landlord so this comes from different perspective. I note people who live in state homes that aren’t up to their standards either.
I’m not sure what the answer is as I’m sure some of the homeless have made bad choices as well.
Hmmm who do you think pays for the extra red tape the gov apply to land lords. No offense Francis you don’t need to be a scholar to work out user pays. In this case the tenant in the form of unreal rents.
Now dont get me wrong I don’t think system is perfect nor do I necessarily disagree with the healthy homes initiative. The point I’m making is when you try to improve things for poorer demographics it always costs the needy more. So have a look at history and prove I’m incorrect
Most landlords charge what they think the market will bear, not cost plus profit margin. If landlords charged on costs, landlords who own properties outright would charge somewhat lower rents, but they (generally) don't. There are other pricing considerations like return on assets, but that's not cost plus margin either.
These arguments always seem to be framed as landlords v tenants but often a lot of the issues caused by the property managers in between. My direct experience of this cadre is not enlightening and I suspect a lot of flak aimed at landlords should really be directed at the agents
Do you take your car for a yearly (or twice yearly) WOF check? Why? Perhaps because we think it should be safe to drive. How come you then accept that a house where people live, breath and raise their children at, should not have a minimum standard of health & safety?
My Aunt used to live in a very old apartment building in upstate NY. For winter warmth it had central heating and the cost of it was included in the rent. Oh, and there are restrictions as to how much you can hike the rent. And that's in the USA, home of capitalism!
Housing is a human right not a business. If private LL are going to A&^$# then the govt should build so many state houses they will have to compete on the few renters left for the private sector. And for the govt to build A LOT more state houses the govt needs to stop restricting itself with the "fiscal responsibility rules" (that somehow only apply when it comes to expenses for the betterment of poor people) and build more houses.
As Mark Twain reputedly said, “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”
It’s not enough to criticise, though. What would a National led government do to address this crisis? The inference is that this dreadful situation wouldn’t occur with a change in government but that is misleading. It would likely get worse, unless you’re a landlord.
Its quite simple to fix. At the end of the day you just need a tax system and political policy that is focused on insentavising productive economic activity for the long term growth and health of a nation. You need a government that is lean but competent and focused on providing the basic frame work for success with enough of a safety net and ability to do things more effectively that the private sector will only do for profit with out becoming overly idealistic or influenced by special interests. Its a pretty tall ask but entirely possible with the right dictator in charge. case in point Singapore.
National and Act policies WILL reignite/relight/restart the raging inferno of increasing residential property prices !!!!!! This will make the housing deficiency and unaffordability in New Zealand much worse than currently.
The government must urgently !!!!!! build/construct at least 125,000 public/state dwellings in the locations and of the sizes that are needed. this will greatly reduce many of the serious problems in NZ society that exist today.
They have made it illegal for people to rent cheap properties and sleep in garages, what the well intended didn't realise when they went after the "evil landlords" was that for some people the next port of call is their cars.
It's true, simply blaming landlords and describing them as 'evil' is not helpful. But I'm not convinced allowing people to rent out drafty shitholes is in any way better. The trouble is we have made property so integral to our national ('mum and dad') wealth that any effort to treat property leasing as a 'proper' business has proven impossible.
If we regulated properties, with registration, audits and strict rules; plus we acknowledged that high-quality, cost-effective shelter is essential for our collective health/education/crime/productivity. And then, if we treated it like every other business - that is, "the customer (tenant) is always right", but we also restored interest deductibility and depreciation, I expect we'd see professionals take over and the 'evil' move onto easier grifts like NFTs.
This is just a symptom of the problems. While writing legislation to treat the worst offenders is not a bad thing but it was always an ambulance at the bottom of a clif solution. Landlords are out to make money. The idea that they rent property out of the godness of there heart or that those Mon and Dad landlords are being disadvantaged is nosecone the majority of renters would not do so if had the means to purchase.
The idea that Mom and Dad landlords can some how solve the national housing crisis by buying a rental on the side is total nonsense. An individual whos primary skill set and training is dong something totally different can not build at the scale required or have access to the financing and resources required. In most countries not even private companies can do it. What happens it cities that have solved the problem is that local and central governments build at massive scale. Taking out 30 - 50 year bonds, re-zoning massive block of land and build massive cost effective housing blocks. They then often rent or on sell these to things like state pension funds for long term stable returns. Karan and Jo landlord simply out bid a first home buyer on an existing property leveraged up from an ozzie bank and use it as a tax free side shuffle. Its dosent solve housing its just pushes up property prices.
It says it all about our political economy and about Labour never walking their talk.
Ardern in 2018: "As soon as we came into government we knew we wouldn’t be able to physically build the houses we’d need by May, when winter was really starting to bite. So we acknowledge this is emergency, this is transitional [housing], but we couldn’t stand by and see people in cars or completely unsuitable housing in the meantime.”
No one should be sleeping in a car this winter,” said Twyword. “Absolutely,” seconded Ardern. “No one”.
Certainly Ardern was a fraud. While she performed well as a populist PR person. She clearly did not have the quality and skill in her wider team to succeed in any meaningful way and did dupe a large percentage of the population who actually voted her in on a housing reform / kiwi build mandate.
Whatever the election results, these trends will continue... NZ is captured by special interests at every level. Without tax and electoral reform, I can't see the pathway to solving the infrastructure/population- related issues that keep housing costs so high.
Not at all JP F. You have succinctly spelt out what Ben describes as deeply shameful, and I agree with him too. Electoral Reform means listening to the people and reducing the 5% threshold which makes a mockery of MMP. Tax reform means a tax on land, the underlying reason why wealth is so unevenly distributed. I don't really mean wealth actually, I mean the means of survival. Until new political voices can be heard and their reflection on what is good for ALL New Zealanders is able to become policy - we will go rapidly down the path of wholesale social breakdown and runaway climate disasters. Writing from rain soaked and suddenly unsafe Auckland.
If Labour had the political will, they could have fixed the housing crises during the last 5.5 years. What's worse is that a NACT government would stop all state house building.
Your assertion that National would stop house building ignores the fact that their strategy to take existing areas of state housing - yes, sell some off - and rebuild into better, newer, warmer, more appropriate and intensive housing (such as GI) with a mix of state, private and community housing - more housing in the same space, and it is still happening there.
This plan was criticised by Labour at the time, but changed from a lot of old 1930's homes into a new millennia. It delivered a large number of new state, private and community homes during Labours reign, that success claimed by Labour.
Nats also engaged community providers to deliver housing. Labour put a stop to that for Kiwibuild, based on the ideology that only the government can provide solutions.
Both parties have to do more to provide more total, and more affordable housing.
Its pointless to go down the track of its National or Labours fault. TBH is sounds like my 5 years children fighting and blaming the other one for all there problems. Both Parties are fairly hopeless, have some strong point but at the end of the day are a reflection of the people who elected them.
yes ! We so need to vote for those parties who have the solutions .even if we are led to believe 'its a wasted vote '.. Strong messages to the major parties needed. 🤞
The thing is that the Nats threw a lot of people out on the Paula Bennet meth testing scam so a whole lot of people were made homeless on the conflating of smoking some P and having a meth lab and those people were not eligible for public hoising so the stats looked better
Its not like we dont haven enough land, or natural resources in the country to build enough housing. The housing issue is not the result of a natural disaster its not even a lack of wealth or know how, New Zealand is still a very wealthy country. The housing issues is an entirely deliberately self created human problem 100% avoidable and easily solved with enough political will. Its a collective choice where the average New Zealander has decided there personal wealth in property must be protected at the expense of the wealth of the nation as a whole.
Utterly gut wrenching that a Government; ostensibly with the poor and marginalised at the core of their support base, has allowed an economic status quo to continue at the expense of their constituents.
Rex, you have to ask where the money that could have provided that solution was spent, because the tax revenue growth is stupendous. How many houses would the RNZ merger cost have provided, or Te Pukenga restructure, do I keep going?
Governments make decisions based on their agenda. With a claimed focus on poverty, the current government embarked on widespread bureaucratic restructure, but hasn't put that level of funds towards the areas that would address these issues.
So those of us that do vote have a duty to ensure that one of the parties with CG and wealth tax in their policies is represented in parliament with a sufficient mandate. This has never been more important in our lives. And it’s never been more urgent for our mokopuna.
I don't either, but I can take a stab. Governments are clumsy and try to fix entrenched problems by sudden (rather than incremental) policy changes. Today, it's all about punishing landlords, when many are actually caring people who do care about their tenants and are taking risks financially to own a rental or two. Another case in the 1980's involved farmers. This happened when the UK joined the EU and NZ was jettisoned from familiar markets for meat, wool, butter, etc. Also, Labour was in charge and knew well that most farmers voted National. So they withdrew subsidies almost overnight and also vastly increased interest rates. Australia was also affected, but their government made the changes slowly, giving farmers time to adjust without losing their farms. Where envy comes in, is the policies of the Labour government certainly punished the National-voting farmers, but perversely hit those with mortgages - people who saved for a deposit by years of fencing/shearing, bought the land at 7% and then found this increased to 19% on first mortgage and 32% on overdraft. Combined with lambs that sold for $7 rather than $60. Many lost their lives to suicide after losing their farms. Farmers who inherited their land were cushioned, so this is an example of the politics of envy going wrong. With housing, there could be a perverse outcome if the landlords who took risks with mortgages, find compliance costs tip the balance and sell up, thus reducing the stock of rentals. Wealthy, non-caring landlords won't be affected as much, so will buy up this housing stock and perhaps not be such good landlords. It's not a win overall for tenants. But it does privatise the rental market more, thus punishing the good landlords, the tenants who are competing for fewer and lower quality tenancies, while the government can wash their hands of responsibility. Anyway P Craig, that's my attempt. Other readers may have a better definition of the politics of envy.
Except the Lange government came in a full ten years after Britain entered the EU and remember the subsidy based on head count of sheep in Muldoons govt SMP where the total number of sheep reached ~ 70 mill in 82 and then decreased quite rapidly after Roger Douglas did away with the subsidy.
Yes the effects I describe did take place under Douglas, and I seem to recall the sheep numbers went down to around 22m. Not exactly a managed reduction. SMP?
As the Human Rights commissioner said early this week housing is a basic human right which our government has signed up to uphold. Unfortunately, only lip service then paid to the problem on the ground. It is hard to see this problem and the related issue of families in motel rooms can be solved without a concerted long term plan to build significantly more social housing and support for affordable rental accommodation in the main tourist centres for hospitality workers also being forced to live rough. It is. national disgrace - for some reason the predictive text tried to put a capital on national!
I know I harp on a bit but did we not buy ourselves a tiger back in the eighties? We try all these ways to get it to behave nicely. Try to get it to share the bounty, be nice to people who need something, but it wont. We seem not to know how to go about it, but we have to get rid of the tiger - don't we.
This is a bit long but seems like a good piece from an NZ medical journal way back in 2020.
diabolical demon roger douglas and his neoliberalism are the main cause of most of the horrendous problems (inequity, homelessness, family breakdowns, ram raiding, violent burglaries, etc) in NZ society today.
So one answer is to give them an $1M home via KO, with the govt picking up the tab for subsidised rent, rates, insurance and maintenance, and circa $80k in benefits P/A. Thats the answer for these people helping themselves to some degree, as $1M solutions puts them in the top 5% of NZ with no accountability or contribution to a fully funded lifestyle by others?
Our energy bill is down on last year, and we haven't been skimping on power. It just hasn't been that cold. A few chilly patches here and there.
It seems we have always been able to count on Wellington tossing in a smattering of spirit-lifting sunny days - even in the depths of winter - but this year has felt uncharacteristically warm.
there are more than 500,000 residential rental property owners in NZ and they own more than 1,500,000 residential rental properties. most of them are lusting and drooling for a National and/or Act government because they will be able to deduct mortgage interest from their rental incomes and they will not have to pay any capital income tax on their properties (although they do not have to on new builds at present). and they will be voters. National and Act policies will give them a colossal financial advantage over people purchasing a home for themself, and will reignite/relight/restart the raging inferno of increasing residential property prices.
Deeply shameful
I imagine that $90m subsidy—to help our largest polluter become a big-grown-up-company, with clean shoes and an ironed shirt, all ready for the big scary wide world of "capitalism"!—could have gone quite some way to slowing our transition to a #vanlife economy... After all, poor liddle Fonterra only made $1.1b in after-tax profit last year (plus another quarter of a billion selling Soprole). It's just so lucky we had some extra money in the government cheque account to give them a little leg up!
Wow. What can we do. This is terrible. The govt are to blame for the rent hikes. By the laws they put in place for landlords healthy homes and the no longer being able to claim a lot on your investment. To be clear I’m not a landlord so this comes from different perspective. I note people who live in state homes that aren’t up to their standards either.
I’m not sure what the answer is as I’m sure some of the homeless have made bad choices as well.
Hmmm who do you think pays for the extra red tape the gov apply to land lords. No offense Francis you don’t need to be a scholar to work out user pays. In this case the tenant in the form of unreal rents.
Now dont get me wrong I don’t think system is perfect nor do I necessarily disagree with the healthy homes initiative. The point I’m making is when you try to improve things for poorer demographics it always costs the needy more. So have a look at history and prove I’m incorrect
Most landlords charge what they think the market will bear, not cost plus profit margin. If landlords charged on costs, landlords who own properties outright would charge somewhat lower rents, but they (generally) don't. There are other pricing considerations like return on assets, but that's not cost plus margin either.
These arguments always seem to be framed as landlords v tenants but often a lot of the issues caused by the property managers in between. My direct experience of this cadre is not enlightening and I suspect a lot of flak aimed at landlords should really be directed at the agents
Do you take your car for a yearly (or twice yearly) WOF check? Why? Perhaps because we think it should be safe to drive. How come you then accept that a house where people live, breath and raise their children at, should not have a minimum standard of health & safety?
My Aunt used to live in a very old apartment building in upstate NY. For winter warmth it had central heating and the cost of it was included in the rent. Oh, and there are restrictions as to how much you can hike the rent. And that's in the USA, home of capitalism!
Housing is a human right not a business. If private LL are going to A&^$# then the govt should build so many state houses they will have to compete on the few renters left for the private sector. And for the govt to build A LOT more state houses the govt needs to stop restricting itself with the "fiscal responsibility rules" (that somehow only apply when it comes to expenses for the betterment of poor people) and build more houses.
As Mark Twain reputedly said, “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”
It’s not enough to criticise, though. What would a National led government do to address this crisis? The inference is that this dreadful situation wouldn’t occur with a change in government but that is misleading. It would likely get worse, unless you’re a landlord.
Its quite simple to fix. At the end of the day you just need a tax system and political policy that is focused on insentavising productive economic activity for the long term growth and health of a nation. You need a government that is lean but competent and focused on providing the basic frame work for success with enough of a safety net and ability to do things more effectively that the private sector will only do for profit with out becoming overly idealistic or influenced by special interests. Its a pretty tall ask but entirely possible with the right dictator in charge. case in point Singapore.
National and Act policies WILL reignite/relight/restart the raging inferno of increasing residential property prices !!!!!! This will make the housing deficiency and unaffordability in New Zealand much worse than currently.
The government must urgently !!!!!! build/construct at least 125,000 public/state dwellings in the locations and of the sizes that are needed. this will greatly reduce many of the serious problems in NZ society that exist today.
They have made it illegal for people to rent cheap properties and sleep in garages, what the well intended didn't realise when they went after the "evil landlords" was that for some people the next port of call is their cars.
It's true, simply blaming landlords and describing them as 'evil' is not helpful. But I'm not convinced allowing people to rent out drafty shitholes is in any way better. The trouble is we have made property so integral to our national ('mum and dad') wealth that any effort to treat property leasing as a 'proper' business has proven impossible.
If we regulated properties, with registration, audits and strict rules; plus we acknowledged that high-quality, cost-effective shelter is essential for our collective health/education/crime/productivity. And then, if we treated it like every other business - that is, "the customer (tenant) is always right", but we also restored interest deductibility and depreciation, I expect we'd see professionals take over and the 'evil' move onto easier grifts like NFTs.
This is just a symptom of the problems. While writing legislation to treat the worst offenders is not a bad thing but it was always an ambulance at the bottom of a clif solution. Landlords are out to make money. The idea that they rent property out of the godness of there heart or that those Mon and Dad landlords are being disadvantaged is nosecone the majority of renters would not do so if had the means to purchase.
The idea that Mom and Dad landlords can some how solve the national housing crisis by buying a rental on the side is total nonsense. An individual whos primary skill set and training is dong something totally different can not build at the scale required or have access to the financing and resources required. In most countries not even private companies can do it. What happens it cities that have solved the problem is that local and central governments build at massive scale. Taking out 30 - 50 year bonds, re-zoning massive block of land and build massive cost effective housing blocks. They then often rent or on sell these to things like state pension funds for long term stable returns. Karan and Jo landlord simply out bid a first home buyer on an existing property leveraged up from an ozzie bank and use it as a tax free side shuffle. Its dosent solve housing its just pushes up property prices.
It says it all about our political economy and about Labour never walking their talk.
Ardern in 2018: "As soon as we came into government we knew we wouldn’t be able to physically build the houses we’d need by May, when winter was really starting to bite. So we acknowledge this is emergency, this is transitional [housing], but we couldn’t stand by and see people in cars or completely unsuitable housing in the meantime.”
No one should be sleeping in a car this winter,” said Twyword. “Absolutely,” seconded Ardern. “No one”.
Certainly Ardern was a fraud. While she performed well as a populist PR person. She clearly did not have the quality and skill in her wider team to succeed in any meaningful way and did dupe a large percentage of the population who actually voted her in on a housing reform / kiwi build mandate.
Whatever the election results, these trends will continue... NZ is captured by special interests at every level. Without tax and electoral reform, I can't see the pathway to solving the infrastructure/population- related issues that keep housing costs so high.
Sorry, bit negative I know
Not at all JP F. You have succinctly spelt out what Ben describes as deeply shameful, and I agree with him too. Electoral Reform means listening to the people and reducing the 5% threshold which makes a mockery of MMP. Tax reform means a tax on land, the underlying reason why wealth is so unevenly distributed. I don't really mean wealth actually, I mean the means of survival. Until new political voices can be heard and their reflection on what is good for ALL New Zealanders is able to become policy - we will go rapidly down the path of wholesale social breakdown and runaway climate disasters. Writing from rain soaked and suddenly unsafe Auckland.
Very well put JP F! I couldn’t agree more!!
You hit the nail right on its sad head !
If Labour had the political will, they could have fixed the housing crises during the last 5.5 years. What's worse is that a NACT government would stop all state house building.
Your assertion that National would stop house building ignores the fact that their strategy to take existing areas of state housing - yes, sell some off - and rebuild into better, newer, warmer, more appropriate and intensive housing (such as GI) with a mix of state, private and community housing - more housing in the same space, and it is still happening there.
This plan was criticised by Labour at the time, but changed from a lot of old 1930's homes into a new millennia. It delivered a large number of new state, private and community homes during Labours reign, that success claimed by Labour.
Nats also engaged community providers to deliver housing. Labour put a stop to that for Kiwibuild, based on the ideology that only the government can provide solutions.
Both parties have to do more to provide more total, and more affordable housing.
Its pointless to go down the track of its National or Labours fault. TBH is sounds like my 5 years children fighting and blaming the other one for all there problems. Both Parties are fairly hopeless, have some strong point but at the end of the day are a reflection of the people who elected them.
yes ! We so need to vote for those parties who have the solutions .even if we are led to believe 'its a wasted vote '.. Strong messages to the major parties needed. 🤞
The thing is that the Nats threw a lot of people out on the Paula Bennet meth testing scam so a whole lot of people were made homeless on the conflating of smoking some P and having a meth lab and those people were not eligible for public hoising so the stats looked better
however this article I have postec elsewhere is encouraging https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/property/131950275/how-ockham-residential-is-helping-deliver-kiwibuild-20
Its not like we dont haven enough land, or natural resources in the country to build enough housing. The housing issue is not the result of a natural disaster its not even a lack of wealth or know how, New Zealand is still a very wealthy country. The housing issues is an entirely deliberately self created human problem 100% avoidable and easily solved with enough political will. Its a collective choice where the average New Zealander has decided there personal wealth in property must be protected at the expense of the wealth of the nation as a whole.
Utterly gut wrenching that a Government; ostensibly with the poor and marginalised at the core of their support base, has allowed an economic status quo to continue at the expense of their constituents.
Rex, you have to ask where the money that could have provided that solution was spent, because the tax revenue growth is stupendous. How many houses would the RNZ merger cost have provided, or Te Pukenga restructure, do I keep going?
Governments make decisions based on their agenda. With a claimed focus on poverty, the current government embarked on widespread bureaucratic restructure, but hasn't put that level of funds towards the areas that would address these issues.
Sadly, the poor and marginalised tend not to vote. At least not like those who aren’t poor or marginalised.
So those of us that do vote have a duty to ensure that one of the parties with CG and wealth tax in their policies is represented in parliament with a sufficient mandate. This has never been more important in our lives. And it’s never been more urgent for our mokopuna.
I don't really understand what is meant by the politics of envy.
I don't either, but I can take a stab. Governments are clumsy and try to fix entrenched problems by sudden (rather than incremental) policy changes. Today, it's all about punishing landlords, when many are actually caring people who do care about their tenants and are taking risks financially to own a rental or two. Another case in the 1980's involved farmers. This happened when the UK joined the EU and NZ was jettisoned from familiar markets for meat, wool, butter, etc. Also, Labour was in charge and knew well that most farmers voted National. So they withdrew subsidies almost overnight and also vastly increased interest rates. Australia was also affected, but their government made the changes slowly, giving farmers time to adjust without losing their farms. Where envy comes in, is the policies of the Labour government certainly punished the National-voting farmers, but perversely hit those with mortgages - people who saved for a deposit by years of fencing/shearing, bought the land at 7% and then found this increased to 19% on first mortgage and 32% on overdraft. Combined with lambs that sold for $7 rather than $60. Many lost their lives to suicide after losing their farms. Farmers who inherited their land were cushioned, so this is an example of the politics of envy going wrong. With housing, there could be a perverse outcome if the landlords who took risks with mortgages, find compliance costs tip the balance and sell up, thus reducing the stock of rentals. Wealthy, non-caring landlords won't be affected as much, so will buy up this housing stock and perhaps not be such good landlords. It's not a win overall for tenants. But it does privatise the rental market more, thus punishing the good landlords, the tenants who are competing for fewer and lower quality tenancies, while the government can wash their hands of responsibility. Anyway P Craig, that's my attempt. Other readers may have a better definition of the politics of envy.
Except the Lange government came in a full ten years after Britain entered the EU and remember the subsidy based on head count of sheep in Muldoons govt SMP where the total number of sheep reached ~ 70 mill in 82 and then decreased quite rapidly after Roger Douglas did away with the subsidy.
Yes the effects I describe did take place under Douglas, and I seem to recall the sheep numbers went down to around 22m. Not exactly a managed reduction. SMP?
As the Human Rights commissioner said early this week housing is a basic human right which our government has signed up to uphold. Unfortunately, only lip service then paid to the problem on the ground. It is hard to see this problem and the related issue of families in motel rooms can be solved without a concerted long term plan to build significantly more social housing and support for affordable rental accommodation in the main tourist centres for hospitality workers also being forced to live rough. It is. national disgrace - for some reason the predictive text tried to put a capital on national!
This is a cumulative list, the number can only go up.
I know I harp on a bit but did we not buy ourselves a tiger back in the eighties? We try all these ways to get it to behave nicely. Try to get it to share the bounty, be nice to people who need something, but it wont. We seem not to know how to go about it, but we have to get rid of the tiger - don't we.
This is a bit long but seems like a good piece from an NZ medical journal way back in 2020.
https://journal.nzma.org.nz/journal-articles/neoliberalism-what-it-is-how-it-affects-health-and-what-to-do-about-it
diabolical demon roger douglas and his neoliberalism are the main cause of most of the horrendous problems (inequity, homelessness, family breakdowns, ram raiding, violent burglaries, etc) in NZ society today.
So one answer is to give them an $1M home via KO, with the govt picking up the tab for subsidised rent, rates, insurance and maintenance, and circa $80k in benefits P/A. Thats the answer for these people helping themselves to some degree, as $1M solutions puts them in the top 5% of NZ with no accountability or contribution to a fully funded lifestyle by others?
Ha! The irony Bernard, it feels like it's barely rained at all in Wellington this winter
Yes!
Our energy bill is down on last year, and we haven't been skimping on power. It just hasn't been that cold. A few chilly patches here and there.
It seems we have always been able to count on Wellington tossing in a smattering of spirit-lifting sunny days - even in the depths of winter - but this year has felt uncharacteristically warm.
Wellington is the new Kerikeri !