Our ‘caring compassionate’ government does not appear to be solving the housing crisis any better than the former government. John Campbell has revealed the living conditions at a West Auckland caravan park that the Ministry of Social Development has called “a last resort and unfit for children”.
The amount of rent being charged for the most basic of facilities is also of concern. $240 a week for a small caravan for example. What they have is better than living in their car or under a bridge but it cannot be a long term solution. The shared communal toilet in the park is kept locked and tenants have to go to the office to get a key every time that they need to use it.
What does the housing crisis look like when you’re trapped at the bottom of the heap?
John Campbell went to a caravan park in West Auckland
Breakfast’s John Campbell was issued a trespass notice yesterday, while investigating a West Auckland caravan park that costs up to $500 a week and has been declared unfit as a place for children to live.
The units in Western Park Village in Ranui have no toilet, bathroom, or stove top – only communal facilities and very little space to bring up children in.
[…] While touring the facility with Alwyn Poole from Villa Education Trust, which teaches some of the kids from the camping ground, Campbell was asked to leave by a manager.
“These would be their most vulnerable kids and they’re not doing them any favours whatsoever,” Mr Poole said.
“School aged children live here, children under five, those kids just haven’t got a hope.”
The Ministry of Social Development has called the living conditions a last resort and unfit for children.
Despite this, tenants at the park are not on a waiting list to be moved somewhere better.
[…] The Housing Minister said, “The government has just put $193 million into Housing First to help the long term homeless into warm, dry and secure housing.”
“We have the funding for the next four years for 2700 transitional housing places… …and investing $4 billion into state houses in the four-year period,” he told Campbell.
[…] Bernie Smith of the Monte Cecilia Housing Trust told Campbell the concern is that the Government has known about this situation for so long.
“They could have shut it down, they could have made Housing New Zealand properties available and transferred people into more appropriate housing,” he said.
“No one has done so because it appears to be too big, but it doesn’t have to be.”
He said the problem is there is “no housing pipeline”.
“Even this Government that ridiculed the previous Government in what it did and didn’t do hasn’t been able to create a pipeline so that people can go from transitional housing into private rentals.”
tvnz.co.nz
The government should take a leaf out of the Act party’s book. The private sector is much more efficient at providing rental properties and building new housing. Instead of trying to be a landlord and to build new houses the government should be slashing all the red tape that is preventing developers from getting on with the job. They also should roll back all their anti-landlord policies that have in a very short period of time removed so many rentals from the market.
The way to help these people is to help the private sector. The government’s meddling has caused rental shortages and sky rocketing rental increases. They are simply incompetent as they have made the housing crisis worse.
