Bishop aims to cut $1m a day cost of emergency housing in motels; says Govt to 'get a bit tough' on those getting motel vouchers who don't need them; No word yet on extra social housing
Government rental subsidies to private sector that have been in place for years transfer $ directly into landlord pockets and drive rental costs up generally, and simply displace homes from the non-subsidised rental market to the subsidised rental market. Same thing IRRS, govt paying extortionate rates to private landlords for (often barely liveable) homes and (also barely liveable) motel rooms under previous governments have been doing. The only ones who are better off are the landlords. Bishop's 'new' approach is just tweaking the model so that even more of the benefit goes to 'investors' as well as the richest taxpayers (oh wait, might those be the same people...?). Nothing new about continuing to drive inflated rents, funnel more $ direct into private landlords pockets, and do absolutely nothing about the actual number of homes available. I also don't get how the investors get a return on this - does this just mean rents increase twice over to cover the investor return as well as the landlord cream-off?
Here we go. Landlord bashing again. For the last 6 years we had labour and greens in power. They are the ones who have been subsudising landlords??? Or are you blaming the current coalition government for labor green sins?
I was never a fan of the emergency hotels but thought it was far better than the alternative of kids living in cars. In spite of the rhetoric it seems that we’re going back to this. A sad time
So the coalition of chaos wants people in emergency housing, go and stay with friends and family. The people’s friends and family are probably also doing it tough some maybe in public housing who are not allowed to have extra people come and stay with them. If these people in emergency housing had the option to stay somewhere better, that’s where they would be. Emergency housing and motels is not a pleasant place to be.
Absolutely. People who have other options aren't "choosing" to go to emergency housing instead, because it's such a sweet deal. This government is willfully blind and malevolent ignorant.
Struggling to see how people moving to Rotorua which has, or had, some emergency accommodation, from places that have none are somehow rotting the system. Not much different from moving to get work, is it, at bottom?
The coalition of chaos wants people to be responsible for themselves and stop replying on taxpayer for support . Yes of course some people need help. But there are also plenty of people who take the piss. This is what the coalition of chaos is trying to stop. And good on them!
What about rent control. ‘In Vienna, 80% of residents rent, and virtually every rental has some form of rent control. As a result residents rent for life and often pay as little as 8% of their income on rent (compared to over 30% for renters in Oz). 60% live in social housing”
It’s always funny to hear how expensive things are when it comes to acting on need and poverty, but nothing of the sort when it comes to lightening taxes on wealthy exploitative landowners who hoard enormous, unproductive, unearned, and untaxed wealth.
The whole bill for emergency housing in these motels is only 10% of the tax cuts for a single year yet this government is pulling out all stops for the tax cuts.
Rich p….s will profit again.After all it is them in control and supporting their mates and landlords. All part of the “three headed Taniwha” . The revolution will come.
Don't hold your breath on more social housing. Bishop, (the tobacco lobbyist) has appointed Bill English to 'independently' review Kanga Ora's activities. English & his crony Key privatised thousands of State houses in their time & Bishop, (who's too simple to understand a balance sheet) is whining that Kanga Ora's liabilities have increased. Of course they've increased - they've borrowed more to build extra state houses & these new houses appear as a corresponding asset increase on the other side of the balance sheet. The lives of the poor are difficult enough without the sociopaths of cabinet adding to their difficulties.
Prime Minister Luxon personally owns 7 houses and probably more in Trusts. As part of the Coalition government’s social housing policy he should direct his tenants that for humanitarian reasons they must take in people who have no housing even though they aren’t friends or family. This could be the first step in the social housing policy.
I wonder how mant tenants he has, or does he live in them all? How many "friends" does he have couch-surfing in his abodes? How can he possibly understand what it is like not to have a home or enough savings to even contemplate buying one, when prospective landlords can outbid them? People before tax cuts!
Full marks to Prof. Joanna Kidman for stating the obvious - this government hates children. Amusing how a hypocrite like Seymour pretends to support free speech until someone crticises his policies.
Yes silly of Seymour. Kidman is an academic seconded to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to run the Centre for Countering Violent Extremism. As such free speech protections for academics apply fully to her. Would be different if she was a senior public servant appointed via the State Services Commission process.
They hate children, but so did Labour, in this respect: getting them addicted in epidemic levels to vapes, as even the amendment was a pretence, allowing them displayed and sold by all retailers, dairies, chemists the lot, with no health warnings, no vape quitting programmes, while cotporations and the government made money. It makes me sick seeing children vaping when the WHO says they should be tightly regulated or banned as they are a serious threat to health.
However, Labour was not guilty of advocating 'boot camp', proven to exacerbate recidivism. This is not 'my area' but it appears the causal factors include young people usually not having had support and backing in their short lives to date. I am not sure that boot camp is going to provide that, possibly essential, factor in turning someone's life around. C Hipkins was in fact going to implement a programme with evidence of success. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-intensive-turnaround-programme-launched-break-cycle-offending
David M Partly valid criticism I agree. But the quote was about the Coalition hating children so my comment was relevant in that regard. I addressed 2 areas in which this was clearly manifested and current, one being boot camp. And yes I have brought up vape problems a lot in this sub stack but it is because they reflect inordinate corruption and harm about which nothing is being done, and people seem to remain under a major misapprehension that Labour were doing anything with the amendment. Hence the repetition. Have you done anything at all to prevent vaping being ignored? Just curious.
I think her comments were emotive. However, basing the school lunches on whether children attend school or improve academic achievement shouldn't be the only criteria. Surely, it would be if they are needing sustenance. At the same time, I see some anomalies in the lunches in schools programme. In some schools there is a lot of waste and an enormous amount of refuse going to landfill. However, the left over lunches are often distributed to families that need them. At one school where they are cooked on site and produce is used from the school garden to go towards the meals seems successful. The students tend the school gardens. At another school, I understand that the lunches are out sourced and supplied from Auckland - that doesn't make sense. Often the children have an adequate lunchbox provided from home for their morning tea, sandwich, yoghurt, muesli bar etc, the equivalent of a school lunch. Many students eat their lunch from home. The children identified needing lunches used to be provided for with a plain paper bag with a lunch. ( from a charity) Maybe they could be put into a lunchbox that is returned each day so that the brown paper bag didn't differentiate them.
I think that now the lunches have been provided for schools that have signed up for them would find it difficult if it was discontinued. I just think it needs to be critiqued.
I agree. It’s the emotive language she used that’s the problem, not the criticisms. Using her public platform to invite division by using such emotive language is wrong. Criticising the government’s attitude towards children is not.
She was handpicked to work against division in our society. Advocating for school lunches for all is an excellent way to do that. Perpetuating the us vs them or Labour vs National narrative is not.
Can someone please explain this to me, because having read it a number of times, I still don't get it
"So we might put out a bond, which a group of people might essentially contract into, and it might be a group of landlords, or it might be a group of community housing providers working with private landlords, for example, and say, you know what, we'll aim to get, say, 500 families who are in emergency housing, we'll get them into a new home or into a social house, and we'll aim to keep them in that social house because sustaining people's tenancies is often a challenge.
And if we do that, then we'll expect some financial reward for doing that."
It's right wing BS. These fools in government are now realising that the obscene tax cuts which they've promised their cronies are unsustainable so they're slashing & burning & babbling financial gibberish.
My understanding from the last time social bonds were used (and note that I think that only two of them even got anywhere near being called a success), and from how they are used overseas was that government contracts private providers to deliver a social service. The private provider is measured on the outcomes they achieve through that social service, and if they meet or exceed the KPIs, then they get a dividend / extra payment for doing so.
The concept is that private sector finances up front, removing the cost from the government short term accounts, and if the service is a success (which reduces long term social costs), the private sector gets a bonus - the idea being the bonus is less than the social costs that have been saved.
My imperfect understanding of how this played out in reality (here and overseas, where the concept came from) is that:
* There was a complete inability to agree appropriate outcome measures that could be achieved during the life of the contract (it's tough to fix long standing social problems over the course of three years, who knew?!)
* There was a massive risk that the private providers would pick and choose who they looked after - they would be just 'challenging' enough to meet the thresholds of the contract, but the people who really needed the support were put in the 'too hard basket' and passed back to the state.
The other bit that really gets my goat over this is that there are a lot of great NGOs doing similar social work across Aotearoa - they run off the smell of an oily rag, and struggle to get contracts that even pay them fairly for what they do (ie cover the basic cost of delivering the services) - there 'isn't the funding' to pay them more - they then get denigrated for not achieving outcomes in a short space of time. Yet the government seems to be very willing to find extra long term funding to lift a private provider's profits. It smacks of hypocrisy.
There are some good win:win examples in NZ and overseas (e.g. World Bank bonds). Often cheaper and more effective than upfront public investment - especially where there are some innovative aspects and clear KPIs (with objective indicators) embedded in contracts.
Haha, Bernard, you should have just left the remarkably apt typo (from the original mail out) in Bishop's quote: "What we're doing with the social bombs is..."
I love how he had the nerve to mention ‘perverse incentives’ when it comes to desperate people moving to Rotorua, but the entire rent seeker situation that decades of neo liberalism has brought us, just passes him by. Is he a moron or has he just drunk the cool aid?
Also the right wing obsession with victim blaming the poor is just pathological at this point. Has he had to rent in NZ in the last two decades? Clearly not with this drivel coming out of his mouth “So have you unreasonably contributed to your housing situation? Have you paid your bills on time?” Living in La La Land
Reminds me of some fortunate friends who until recently only ever owned or rented from family (at uni) or an employer (mining company at $60 a week for a new 3x2 in Queensland). Boy was renting in the real world an eye opening experience for them. Humbled by the experience for sure.
This govt is simply cruel. If you want less people in motels, build the housing first, not announce there will be an announcement in May and until then you will just throw people out to the street.
MSD employees don't have the time to conduct a thorough investigation so they will just tick a few boxes and rush to the next appointment.
But, it's a way to make the number look good - look how many people we got off the waiting list and out of motels. Aren't we the greatest managers of the economy? and then it will become so bad that the voters will turn to Labour, only to accuse them for not being able to solve decades of neglect in one term, all while making sure we don't invest in anything and keep interest rates down and tax low.
The waiting list is smaller, and we'll just ignore the people who are waiting to get onto the waiting list... (we don't measure that one, so they can't possibly exist - yay, we shut our eyes and the problem has gone away)
Government rental subsidies to private sector that have been in place for years transfer $ directly into landlord pockets and drive rental costs up generally, and simply displace homes from the non-subsidised rental market to the subsidised rental market. Same thing IRRS, govt paying extortionate rates to private landlords for (often barely liveable) homes and (also barely liveable) motel rooms under previous governments have been doing. The only ones who are better off are the landlords. Bishop's 'new' approach is just tweaking the model so that even more of the benefit goes to 'investors' as well as the richest taxpayers (oh wait, might those be the same people...?). Nothing new about continuing to drive inflated rents, funnel more $ direct into private landlords pockets, and do absolutely nothing about the actual number of homes available. I also don't get how the investors get a return on this - does this just mean rents increase twice over to cover the investor return as well as the landlord cream-off?
Here we go. Landlord bashing again. For the last 6 years we had labour and greens in power. They are the ones who have been subsudising landlords??? Or are you blaming the current coalition government for labor green sins?
I was never a fan of the emergency hotels but thought it was far better than the alternative of kids living in cars. In spite of the rhetoric it seems that we’re going back to this. A sad time
So the coalition of chaos wants people in emergency housing, go and stay with friends and family. The people’s friends and family are probably also doing it tough some maybe in public housing who are not allowed to have extra people come and stay with them. If these people in emergency housing had the option to stay somewhere better, that’s where they would be. Emergency housing and motels is not a pleasant place to be.
Absolutely. People who have other options aren't "choosing" to go to emergency housing instead, because it's such a sweet deal. This government is willfully blind and malevolent ignorant.
Struggling to see how people moving to Rotorua which has, or had, some emergency accommodation, from places that have none are somehow rotting the system. Not much different from moving to get work, is it, at bottom?
The coalition of chaos wants people to be responsible for themselves and stop replying on taxpayer for support . Yes of course some people need help. But there are also plenty of people who take the piss. This is what the coalition of chaos is trying to stop. And good on them!
What about rent control. ‘In Vienna, 80% of residents rent, and virtually every rental has some form of rent control. As a result residents rent for life and often pay as little as 8% of their income on rent (compared to over 30% for renters in Oz). 60% live in social housing”
https://theconversation.com/huge-housing-costs-make-us-slaves-to-our-jobs-and-unsustainable-growth-but-theres-another-way-203144?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%207%202024%20-%202899529449&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20March%207%202024%20-%202899529449+CID_e6aa7dca435302271269b23edc001bdf&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Huge%20housing%20costs%20make%20us%20slaves%20to%20our%20jobs%20and%20unsustainable%20growth%20But%20theres%20another%20way
When Bish says tough I look at Upston’s face and just see cruel. His words seem sensible but as others have said - just more money going to landlords…
It’s always funny to hear how expensive things are when it comes to acting on need and poverty, but nothing of the sort when it comes to lightening taxes on wealthy exploitative landowners who hoard enormous, unproductive, unearned, and untaxed wealth.
The whole bill for emergency housing in these motels is only 10% of the tax cuts for a single year yet this government is pulling out all stops for the tax cuts.
Bish please...
Rich p….s will profit again.After all it is them in control and supporting their mates and landlords. All part of the “three headed Taniwha” . The revolution will come.
Patrick Medlicott
Not unless we organise it
Don't hold your breath on more social housing. Bishop, (the tobacco lobbyist) has appointed Bill English to 'independently' review Kanga Ora's activities. English & his crony Key privatised thousands of State houses in their time & Bishop, (who's too simple to understand a balance sheet) is whining that Kanga Ora's liabilities have increased. Of course they've increased - they've borrowed more to build extra state houses & these new houses appear as a corresponding asset increase on the other side of the balance sheet. The lives of the poor are difficult enough without the sociopaths of cabinet adding to their difficulties.
Gary Dyall
Prime Minister Luxon personally owns 7 houses and probably more in Trusts. As part of the Coalition government’s social housing policy he should direct his tenants that for humanitarian reasons they must take in people who have no housing even though they aren’t friends or family. This could be the first step in the social housing policy.
I wonder how mant tenants he has, or does he live in them all? How many "friends" does he have couch-surfing in his abodes? How can he possibly understand what it is like not to have a home or enough savings to even contemplate buying one, when prospective landlords can outbid them? People before tax cuts!
How about he let needy people live in his apartment in Wellington or in Premier House?
Full marks to Prof. Joanna Kidman for stating the obvious - this government hates children. Amusing how a hypocrite like Seymour pretends to support free speech until someone crticises his policies.
Yep. Good point worth remembering. And remembering. And remembering.
Please continue to shine light on hypocrisy.
Yes silly of Seymour. Kidman is an academic seconded to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to run the Centre for Countering Violent Extremism. As such free speech protections for academics apply fully to her. Would be different if she was a senior public servant appointed via the State Services Commission process.
They hate children, but so did Labour, in this respect: getting them addicted in epidemic levels to vapes, as even the amendment was a pretence, allowing them displayed and sold by all retailers, dairies, chemists the lot, with no health warnings, no vape quitting programmes, while cotporations and the government made money. It makes me sick seeing children vaping when the WHO says they should be tightly regulated or banned as they are a serious threat to health.
However, Labour was not guilty of advocating 'boot camp', proven to exacerbate recidivism. This is not 'my area' but it appears the causal factors include young people usually not having had support and backing in their short lives to date. I am not sure that boot camp is going to provide that, possibly essential, factor in turning someone's life around. C Hipkins was in fact going to implement a programme with evidence of success. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-intensive-turnaround-programme-launched-break-cycle-offending
You have a one string guitar - please contribute to the debate. This time it is about housing, not smoking.
David M Partly valid criticism I agree. But the quote was about the Coalition hating children so my comment was relevant in that regard. I addressed 2 areas in which this was clearly manifested and current, one being boot camp. And yes I have brought up vape problems a lot in this sub stack but it is because they reflect inordinate corruption and harm about which nothing is being done, and people seem to remain under a major misapprehension that Labour were doing anything with the amendment. Hence the repetition. Have you done anything at all to prevent vaping being ignored? Just curious.
I disagree. I think her comments invite division and as such she should not be in the role she is in.
I think her comments were emotive. However, basing the school lunches on whether children attend school or improve academic achievement shouldn't be the only criteria. Surely, it would be if they are needing sustenance. At the same time, I see some anomalies in the lunches in schools programme. In some schools there is a lot of waste and an enormous amount of refuse going to landfill. However, the left over lunches are often distributed to families that need them. At one school where they are cooked on site and produce is used from the school garden to go towards the meals seems successful. The students tend the school gardens. At another school, I understand that the lunches are out sourced and supplied from Auckland - that doesn't make sense. Often the children have an adequate lunchbox provided from home for their morning tea, sandwich, yoghurt, muesli bar etc, the equivalent of a school lunch. Many students eat their lunch from home. The children identified needing lunches used to be provided for with a plain paper bag with a lunch. ( from a charity) Maybe they could be put into a lunchbox that is returned each day so that the brown paper bag didn't differentiate them.
I think that now the lunches have been provided for schools that have signed up for them would find it difficult if it was discontinued. I just think it needs to be critiqued.
I agree. It’s the emotive language she used that’s the problem, not the criticisms. Using her public platform to invite division by using such emotive language is wrong. Criticising the government’s attitude towards children is not.
She was handpicked to work against division in our society. Advocating for school lunches for all is an excellent way to do that. Perpetuating the us vs them or Labour vs National narrative is not.
Really don’t think division is sitting around waiting for an invitation
What a ridiculous statement to make. Thoughtless, careless and pointless. Made to look even more ridiculous by the 40 likes it has received so far.
Can someone please explain this to me, because having read it a number of times, I still don't get it
"So we might put out a bond, which a group of people might essentially contract into, and it might be a group of landlords, or it might be a group of community housing providers working with private landlords, for example, and say, you know what, we'll aim to get, say, 500 families who are in emergency housing, we'll get them into a new home or into a social house, and we'll aim to keep them in that social house because sustaining people's tenancies is often a challenge.
And if we do that, then we'll expect some financial reward for doing that."
It's right wing BS. These fools in government are now realising that the obscene tax cuts which they've promised their cronies are unsustainable so they're slashing & burning & babbling financial gibberish.
It is the worst form of borrowing money, while pretending we are not borrowing money.
So I've just listened to the podcast with the RNZ recording and I'm still none the wiser 😂
My understanding from the last time social bonds were used (and note that I think that only two of them even got anywhere near being called a success), and from how they are used overseas was that government contracts private providers to deliver a social service. The private provider is measured on the outcomes they achieve through that social service, and if they meet or exceed the KPIs, then they get a dividend / extra payment for doing so.
The concept is that private sector finances up front, removing the cost from the government short term accounts, and if the service is a success (which reduces long term social costs), the private sector gets a bonus - the idea being the bonus is less than the social costs that have been saved.
My imperfect understanding of how this played out in reality (here and overseas, where the concept came from) is that:
* There was a complete inability to agree appropriate outcome measures that could be achieved during the life of the contract (it's tough to fix long standing social problems over the course of three years, who knew?!)
* There was a massive risk that the private providers would pick and choose who they looked after - they would be just 'challenging' enough to meet the thresholds of the contract, but the people who really needed the support were put in the 'too hard basket' and passed back to the state.
The other bit that really gets my goat over this is that there are a lot of great NGOs doing similar social work across Aotearoa - they run off the smell of an oily rag, and struggle to get contracts that even pay them fairly for what they do (ie cover the basic cost of delivering the services) - there 'isn't the funding' to pay them more - they then get denigrated for not achieving outcomes in a short space of time. Yet the government seems to be very willing to find extra long term funding to lift a private provider's profits. It smacks of hypocrisy.
There are some good win:win examples in NZ and overseas (e.g. World Bank bonds). Often cheaper and more effective than upfront public investment - especially where there are some innovative aspects and clear KPIs (with objective indicators) embedded in contracts.
Haha, Bernard, you should have just left the remarkably apt typo (from the original mail out) in Bishop's quote: "What we're doing with the social bombs is..."
Yikes. Yes. Sorry about that. I have fixed it now online.
Mind you, it was absolutely on the button as a description of the predictable result!
I love how he had the nerve to mention ‘perverse incentives’ when it comes to desperate people moving to Rotorua, but the entire rent seeker situation that decades of neo liberalism has brought us, just passes him by. Is he a moron or has he just drunk the cool aid?
Also the right wing obsession with victim blaming the poor is just pathological at this point. Has he had to rent in NZ in the last two decades? Clearly not with this drivel coming out of his mouth “So have you unreasonably contributed to your housing situation? Have you paid your bills on time?” Living in La La Land
He rented from his in-laws which apparently are not his family.
Reminds me of some fortunate friends who until recently only ever owned or rented from family (at uni) or an employer (mining company at $60 a week for a new 3x2 in Queensland). Boy was renting in the real world an eye opening experience for them. Humbled by the experience for sure.
This govt is simply cruel. If you want less people in motels, build the housing first, not announce there will be an announcement in May and until then you will just throw people out to the street.
MSD employees don't have the time to conduct a thorough investigation so they will just tick a few boxes and rush to the next appointment.
But, it's a way to make the number look good - look how many people we got off the waiting list and out of motels. Aren't we the greatest managers of the economy? and then it will become so bad that the voters will turn to Labour, only to accuse them for not being able to solve decades of neglect in one term, all while making sure we don't invest in anything and keep interest rates down and tax low.
The waiting list is smaller, and we'll just ignore the people who are waiting to get onto the waiting list... (we don't measure that one, so they can't possibly exist - yay, we shut our eyes and the problem has gone away)
Typical "blame the victom" attitude from our NAF government. Maybe the answer is Victorian era poor-houses?
What's the difference between poor-house, boot-camp, forced-labour camp? Not much I'd say.