Community Finance launches Community Housing Funding Agency with private guarantee and calls on Govt to accelerate non-state social home building with an LGFA-style guarantee
MBIE has released feedback received on the Granny Flat proposal. Not sure what their timeline is from here. The team working on it has been downsized (JOKE!).
At the end of the day, the Community Housing project is about charity housing. What’s needed to bring down rents and inflationary real estate prices with their attendant interest rates is publicly funded social housing. Nice work the philanthropists but we need an economy based on justice and equity.
The term “social housing “ annoys me. It makes the divisions in our society clear. You need “social housing” if you haven’t got the necessary abilities to make it in a free market economy. We own real estate because we grew up in ex state houses, had free education to university level and could afford our first steps into real estate. We are well off now not because of what we earned as teachers, but because of the growth in value of real estate and inheritance. The economy we have run for the last forty years is crap. It’s made housing so unaffordable for many that we need to promote “social housing” provided not by the government, but by those individuals that care enough to make an effort to right a wrong that should not be there.
The thing is throughout the country councils had lots of social housing including pensioner housing. And then LG politicians get elected on the promise of lowering rates and then declare council flats are not core business and sell them off.
Same thing can happen with charity social housing. It should be public housing AND community housing in my opinion.
I feel very happy everytime I go past (usually cycling) and see the 44 Kianga Ora homes built in inner New Plymouth opposite Paknsave and opened in June this year. And it was on a derelict car sales yard site.
I cling vainly to the belief that the answer to affordable homes is for the state to build, own, and manage 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 homes for secure, lifetime, income-moderated rent by all who want them.
However, this Government is resolved to destroy the state housing portfolio, and the last government during its six years in power disappeared down the rabbit-hole of KiwiBuild and simultaneously engineered perhaps the greatest house-price rise in New Zealand's history, making houses for ever unaffordable for those who did not already own one (or two, or ten).
So I guess I'm forced to say Yes to this latest community housing funding proposal, because there is not the political will in the Labour Party for anything better.
A Wealth tax should be the new baseline of a tax reform conversation in this country. Use the bright line to have a de facto CGT for housing speculation, even if the goal line is subject to changes of Govt. TPM and Greens have run on this, and we know parts of Labour are keen. TPM and Greens should unite and make this a bottom line negotiation in any future coalition agreement.
Electorally a Wealth tax side-steps the long simmering aversion to having to pay tax on the family home, a concern I hear constantly from very-much not wealthy relatives and friends. If you can clearly campaign on a tax that 98% of the population won’t pay and can offer something universal and substantial in return (say, expanding free schooling to include ECE, free yearly GP visits, including dental treatments in the public healthcares system, lower GST, etc) - boom.
It also better addresses the root rot in our economy; concentrated pools of stagnant money sitting in non-productive assets. Better to have that flowing to more parts of the soil.
Windfall profit taxes that are triggered during periods of high inflation to punish and discourage corporations from taking advantage of inflationary periods to expand their profit margins should also be an easy sell. It could also be a part of a concerted suite of packages to better protect us from the sources of inflation in the future (alongside on-site solar energy production and EV rollouts to hedge against oil/gas fluctuations, and higher tech, decentralised food production to hedge against extreme weather damaging crop yields).
Good call. But why have so many European countries ditched them in the recent years? Lots of them had them and now, apparently very few. Presumably the antis would seize on those reasons to oppose them
On obesity as NZs leading death and disability risk factor: we need strong regulation and policy to protect public health from the food industry behemoths, and the public want this. Also, we need our streets redesigned to allow people and families the choice to travel around their neighbourhood safely by walking, cycling, scootering, wheelchairing. When the car is the only choice perceived as viable, we trap people into lots of time sitting inactive in a big metal box. And voila, lots of obesity results.
Re the deep dive Post article on our public health system - how is it possible to talk sensibly about this without stating as a starting fact that this year the operational health budget has a real 3% per capita cut compared to past budgeted amounts?
MBIE has released feedback received on the Granny Flat proposal. Not sure what their timeline is from here. The team working on it has been downsized (JOKE!).
https://www.building.govt.nz/about-building-performance/all-news-and-updates/summary-of-granny-flats-consultation-feedback
At the end of the day, the Community Housing project is about charity housing. What’s needed to bring down rents and inflationary real estate prices with their attendant interest rates is publicly funded social housing. Nice work the philanthropists but we need an economy based on justice and equity.
The term “social housing “ annoys me. It makes the divisions in our society clear. You need “social housing” if you haven’t got the necessary abilities to make it in a free market economy. We own real estate because we grew up in ex state houses, had free education to university level and could afford our first steps into real estate. We are well off now not because of what we earned as teachers, but because of the growth in value of real estate and inheritance. The economy we have run for the last forty years is crap. It’s made housing so unaffordable for many that we need to promote “social housing” provided not by the government, but by those individuals that care enough to make an effort to right a wrong that should not be there.
The thing is throughout the country councils had lots of social housing including pensioner housing. And then LG politicians get elected on the promise of lowering rates and then declare council flats are not core business and sell them off.
Same thing can happen with charity social housing. It should be public housing AND community housing in my opinion.
I feel very happy everytime I go past (usually cycling) and see the 44 Kianga Ora homes built in inner New Plymouth opposite Paknsave and opened in June this year. And it was on a derelict car sales yard site.
https://kaingaora.govt.nz/en_NZ/news/44-new-homes-and-a-community-space-for-leach-street/
I cling vainly to the belief that the answer to affordable homes is for the state to build, own, and manage 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 homes for secure, lifetime, income-moderated rent by all who want them.
However, this Government is resolved to destroy the state housing portfolio, and the last government during its six years in power disappeared down the rabbit-hole of KiwiBuild and simultaneously engineered perhaps the greatest house-price rise in New Zealand's history, making houses for ever unaffordable for those who did not already own one (or two, or ten).
So I guess I'm forced to say Yes to this latest community housing funding proposal, because there is not the political will in the Labour Party for anything better.
A Wealth tax should be the new baseline of a tax reform conversation in this country. Use the bright line to have a de facto CGT for housing speculation, even if the goal line is subject to changes of Govt. TPM and Greens have run on this, and we know parts of Labour are keen. TPM and Greens should unite and make this a bottom line negotiation in any future coalition agreement.
Electorally a Wealth tax side-steps the long simmering aversion to having to pay tax on the family home, a concern I hear constantly from very-much not wealthy relatives and friends. If you can clearly campaign on a tax that 98% of the population won’t pay and can offer something universal and substantial in return (say, expanding free schooling to include ECE, free yearly GP visits, including dental treatments in the public healthcares system, lower GST, etc) - boom.
It also better addresses the root rot in our economy; concentrated pools of stagnant money sitting in non-productive assets. Better to have that flowing to more parts of the soil.
Windfall profit taxes that are triggered during periods of high inflation to punish and discourage corporations from taking advantage of inflationary periods to expand their profit margins should also be an easy sell. It could also be a part of a concerted suite of packages to better protect us from the sources of inflation in the future (alongside on-site solar energy production and EV rollouts to hedge against oil/gas fluctuations, and higher tech, decentralised food production to hedge against extreme weather damaging crop yields).
Good call. But why have so many European countries ditched them in the recent years? Lots of them had them and now, apparently very few. Presumably the antis would seize on those reasons to oppose them
On obesity as NZs leading death and disability risk factor: we need strong regulation and policy to protect public health from the food industry behemoths, and the public want this. Also, we need our streets redesigned to allow people and families the choice to travel around their neighbourhood safely by walking, cycling, scootering, wheelchairing. When the car is the only choice perceived as viable, we trap people into lots of time sitting inactive in a big metal box. And voila, lots of obesity results.
Love a sweet pea .. 🥰
Just heard that Nikki Kaye has died - aged only 44. A stalwart of a National administration that presided over happier times that the current one. RIP
Re the deep dive Post article on our public health system - how is it possible to talk sensibly about this without stating as a starting fact that this year the operational health budget has a real 3% per capita cut compared to past budgeted amounts?