Last week I wrote of our Government’s plan to spend up large on creating trailer parks to provide emergency housing for the poor downtrodden potential Labour/Green voters. Well as a part of the same promise package, there are a few other items of expenditure that you will all now be paying for if they aren’t given the arse-card on Sept 19th.
The CoL is planning to ‘invest‘ $175 million providing 1000 houses, units and rooms, to provide short term accommodation for people with nowhere to live. Aside from the previously mentioned 150 trailer park homes, they also plan to rent from the private sector another 400 properties, buy another 350 to 450 houses, (I guess there are still a few unsold Kiwibuild properties involved here), and rustle up a further 30 to 50 rooms or units by utilising facilities such as unused student accommodation and former motel rooms.
Well, I have always said that there is little economic sense in putting people up in motel units so granted, purchasing motels would make far more sense.
But I’m not sure how they intend to encourage private sector landlords to rent their properties to people who they would never normally consider as tenants, but I’m sure they will have a plan. Probably one that involves lots of other peoples money. In any case, Housing Minister Megan Woods would like us to know that Kainga Ora – Homes and Communities was confident it would, in fact, be able to find suitable properties to rent. Ok, let us know how that goes Megs. She also goes on to say:
Motels were only ever intended as short-term emergency accommodation of up to seven days, but the average length of stay has increased to over seven weeks…
I guess when the National Party started putting people in motels it was only seven days but hey, whatever National can do, Labour can do better.
Motels are not a suitable environment for vulnerable individuals, families and whanau and they are also not cost effective.
Interest.co.nz
Pretty sure that fits securely into the ‘No Shit Sherlock‘ category. I’m sure it will be way better to just pop them into unused student accommodation.
Apparently your Government is also committing to ‘investing‘ a further $125m over and above the measly $175m mentioned above though. The plan includes:
– $25.6m extra to the Sustaining Tenancies programme to help those at risk of losing their rental with practical support including budget advice, property maintenance, and mental health and addiction support. (Hey ferals, pay your rent, mow your lawns and stop taking drugs. There, sorted.)
– $20m to work with Maori to prevent homelessness & expand housing supply to be delivered by Maori. (They will also provide $0 to end Pakeha homelessness because it’s all their fault anyway).
– $17.5m to support young people leaving Oranga Tamariki care into accommodation with wrap around support services. (I thought we weren’t going to be picking any of those kids up any more?).
– $16.3m to help acute mental health and addiction inpatients transition into the community with housing and other wrap-around support. (Because we all want acute mental health patients and addicts running around our communities).
– $13.5m to pilot a rapid re-housing approach for people receiving Emergency Housing Special Needs Grants. (Geeze, $13.5m, for a pilot program, that should pay for a few extra troughers).
– $19.8m to expand intensive case manager or navigator support services for people in emergency housing longer than seven nights. (Isn’t that kind of included in the one above?).
– $8.7m for a new housing broker service to connect with local landlords and help more Ministry of Social Development clients secure private rental homes. (Oh ok, this is where the private landlord bribes are coming from).
– $740,000 to fund programmes to help people gain skills and confidence to secure and manage a private rental home. (Apparently this is different from the first one above. That one was only for people who already had secured a private rental!)
– $9.3m to support the wellbeing needs of children in emergency housing, such as paying for transport to school or early childhood education. (Taxpayer-funded Taxis for all, woohoo).
Good God, how many extra bureaucrats are going to be sipping at the trough to get all this up and running? Hundreds, thousands?
It’s no wonder all the rental yields in Wellington get better every time we have a Labour government.
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