Skip to content

Ardern Ignores Growing Housing Issues

Fenton St, Rotorua. AKA MSD Mile. Photo credit: Christel Yardley/Stuff

Many Kiwis are now confined in rooms with a tiny fridge and often lack proper cooking facilities. The homeless are dumped together in crammed and completely unsuitable motel accommodation.

According to National MP Chris Bishop, Ardern is in complete denial of the issue.

People have lost their homes, their jobs, their dignity. The homeless Kiwis are reliant on foodbanks and government handouts. Under this inept Labour Government, desperate people are needing emergency housing.

Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

Democracy as we know it has changed’, Ardern’s left-wing Government proudly says, as she deliberately moves NZ away from one-person-one vote. Comrade Ardern, recognised as such by her old friends in the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY), has reiterated she is still a follower of a Marxist agenda, where the government runs all aspects of its citizens’ lives.

Ardern, Carmel Sepuloni (Minister for Social Development and Employment) Woods (Minister of Housing) and Marama Davidson (Associate Minister of Housing), who presumably are well aware of the growing number of homeless, came up with an analogous idea, similar to Marxist dictators. The homeless poor in New Zealand need to be out of sight but with a roof over their heads. Their answer was not ghastly high-rise communist monstrosities, but something similar. Cram these hapless people into motel rooms that previously were suitable only for short-term holiday stays, and certainly not for families along with all their possessions. It’s a shambles and an inhumane experiment.

The communist slogan ‘to each according to their needs’ implies providing every household with a minimum level of housing according to the established standards, regardless of source of income, social status, or place of residence. Devotees of Marxist thinking blame the capitalist system for all the ills and inequalities in society. They deem a housing problem to be a direct consequence of a free-market economy. They believe disparities can be eliminated only through the introduction of a new sociopolitical and economic system guaranteeing a just distribution of existing resources. Their ideology is based on the Marxist doctrines of reorganising all of society.

In the last two centuries for example, Marxist leaders took control of housing allocation and built huge tower block constructions that were expected to eliminate housing shortages and reduce or even erase disparities in housing conditions. Communist ideals were to have thousands of people housed in these grim residential tower blocks. “You will own nothing and be happy.” The people were OK, out of sight and had a roof over their heads.

A recent TV Sunday programme broke the reality of this callous Marxist theory being put into practice in Rotorua. The motels have become a mixture of crime, drugs, alcohol abuse, gang mayhem, fires, damage, rubbish in the street, violence and intimidation. Some are even sleeping with a baseball bat, and some have hated it so much they could not wait to get out of the motel situation, preferring to live in their cars with their children.

The ‘sticking plaster’ answer to this crisis has had a huge effect on the once beautiful city of Rotorua. (I lived there for more than 14 years, but wouldn’t now.) The precarious housing situation in this once popular tourist town has scared not only Kiwis, but tourists too, away from taking a holiday there. Mayor Steve Chadwick acknowledges Rotorua’s bad reputation and admits she would not walk along what used to be called the ‘golden mile’ (of motels) at night. It’s now called the ‘miserable motel mile’, due to 50 motels being used as emergency housing resulting in out-of-control levels of crime and assaults.

This recent report highlights the increase of crime in the Fenton Street area.

The number of homeless in New Zealand has rocketed to 27,000, compared to 5,000 in 2017, when Ardern took office. The tsunami is a direct result of her Marxist agenda. Rents and housing costs have risen sharply; landlords are selling and getting out of the business for several reasons, including the removal of tax-deductibility on interest and the costs of bringing rental stock up to new requirements (requirements not imposed on the government landlord). Moteliers are paid millions of dollars while the government wastes money on restructurings, vanity projects and buying favour.

Ardern ignores the current horrific situation she has created. Her mantra is the homeless are better off the streets and out of their cars. Job done.

The NZ Prime Minister is causing housing inequalities and deprivation, to thousands of very angry, unhappy, oppressed and dispossessed Kiwis. Incredibly Ardern declares she came into this job to “abolish” child poverty.

Bryce Edwards writes that Labour’s support amongst Maori seems to be plummeting. In terms of housing there continues to be a growing disparity and inequality.

The housing crisis Labour inherited from National has now morphed into a “housing catastrophe”, and Labour seems largely uninterested in doing anything about this.

Bryce Edwards

Latest