Friday’s Chorus: 600,000 now use food banks

A butcher’s shop in Glen Innes offering Afterpay for food purchases. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TL;DR: We learned today that rents are so stressful for working poor and beneficiaries that it is forcing 600,000 people to have to use food banks regularly, up more than third since Covid.

Yet there were 214,749 new temporary work visas issued in the 12 months to the end of September and our population grew 105,900 in the year to June, with most of those migrant arrivals trying to settle on arrival in Auckland. We learned last week that the ‘flow’ measure of rents in Auckland rose 9.4% and that 18,003 building consents were issued in Auckland in the year to the end of August, down 16% on the previous year.

Meanwhile, the National-led Government is set to further loosen work visa settings. It is also set to either delay or freeze new infrastructure spending to ensure there’s room in its Budget for tax cuts, over a third of which will go to landlords.

Dumb question, but why are we growing out population at an annual rate of over 200,000 per year when:

• we already have a housing shortage of more than 100,000 affordable homes;

• rents are rising at near-double-digit rates in our most popular and populous city;

• we have the most stressfully-high rents in the world to the point where 11% of the population or 600,000 people are either totally dependent or regularly have to use food banks?

We also learned today that the new Government:

• will cancel plans for a new rail line in Auckland;

• will delay the completion of a new Whangarei hospital out past 2026;

• plans to shortly freeze new investment in social housing by Kāinga Ora and freeze new transport investment by councils and Waka Kotahi/NZTA; but,

• also has detailed plans to further ramp up issuance of temporary work visas.

Paying subscribers can see more detail below the paywall fold and hear more of my analysis in the podcast above.

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