Are we fine with 47.9% home-ownership by 2048?

Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:

1. A Deloitte report for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will fall to 47.9% by 2048. It has proposed ways to ramp up shared ownership, which I argue can only ever fund a tiny part of the massive house-build needed to improve affordability;

2. Simeon Brown has talked a good game on using tolling to pay for new motorways that sprawl out beyond city fringes, but his reticence to fully back tolling for Penlink exposes the political risks of betting on demand management to solve our infrastructure deficit;

3. In solutions news; the Raukawa Energy Innovation Project has reported back from the data-collection phase of its project to monitor 420 homes in Tokoroa and South Waikato and then use data and electricity generation and other interventions to reduce energy hardship;

4. PM Christopher Luxon and Health Minister Shane Reti replaced Te Whatu Ora’s board with ‘hatchet man’ Commissioner Lester Levy last night, telling him to cut $1.4 billion of costs ASAP, which worsen decades of under-funding in inflation-adjusted and per-capita terms;

5. Governments the world over have claimed immutable moral and financial justifications for real and per-capita cuts in public spending over the last 30 years, but they’re usually just covers for pure old selfishness.

6. Bike and e-bike imports have collapsed to 33-year lows this year, sadly at a time they should be exploding.

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Six Things to note on July 23:

1. Fine with a 47.9% home-ownership rate?

Deloitte projects continued fall, and proposes shared ownership tweaks