And do I see any commitment to that policy by Labour now? Answer … silly question.

Goff is everything to everybody and Labour’s latter day version of Bill Rowling made worse by Viking2 promoting him.

Proof positive that ACT (like all Parties) has their share of unguided missiles.

Yeah read the policy, which I am in favour of if it is followed, my concern is that the policy is actually followed and not changed at some later date.

It’s all PC nonsense as people in the private sector who haven’t been lucky enough to win a State house lotto draw have to face the real world. Why should state house tenants be treated with kid gloves and given special status? Plenty of poor people don’t get a state house!

It is also utter nonsense to suggest that extra state houses have to be built to keep up the supply if any are sold. The ones that are sold still have people living in them – the housing supply has remained the same – just as many people are housed! House prices and rentals depend on the overall supply and demand. The government could sell the whole state housing stock tommorrow and the only effect would be for those living in them to get a rise in rent to market levels. No one else’s rent or house price would be change one iota because of the sale! Rents were in fact lower when the last National government was selling off state houses without replacing them.

No one seems capable of even the most basic logical reasoning when discussing housing policy.

my work mate was a porn broker who did a lot of work for WINZ.

If this was during the the Christine Rankin days things were worse than I thought!

we do have a minimum wage, an unemployment benefit, a DPB, ACC and a sickness benefit, a working for families, student allowance, flatmate’s, family members and so on…

my work mate was a porn broker who did a lot of work for WINZ. A typical situation was; delivering a couch to a state house, where the children were playing ps2 on the plasma tv, sitting on a crate with a wrx in the driveway. Another; a person would come into his shop with a $200 voucher for a fridge and then try and sell it back to him for $120.

Get real people…. we are helping a ‘lifestyle’.

In terms of protecting the resale for a profit it takes more than a year. Any sale should be locked in place for a minimum of 5 years and preferably 10 with the only out being an out of town transfer for work or death. We should be looking to create stability in the housing area and if someone is not prepared for that then they should not get to own a state house. In fact I would discount their house on the basis they remained there for that 10 year period because that brings so many other social benefits. So stay put for 10, pay down a chunk of mortgage in that time and you can have your house for valuation less say 10% at todays price. That’s a darn good deal in anyones terms.
I watched Heatley trying to score points on the video last week and all I could see was a light weight second rate Minister who appeared not able to develop any policy of his own (despite being in opposition for what 9 years), didn’t even bother to follow Bob Clarksons suggested policy( probably the only person in the Nats. who knows anything about building and that stuff), and then had the gaul to criticize Phil Goff while reintroducing an almost self same policy that Goff had put in place in 1986. 20 years before. OK so Helen canned it all but like most things she fucked up I suspect very strongly that Goff was fairly pissed off with her for that. ( Take that as a for sure.)
These ministers are disgraceful and should join the comedy theater rather than masquerade as someone well paid to run our country.

How is it that a state tenant so hard up they require a state house can afford to buy one?

No one asking that question. Not important is it. Just rush off to the ideology back-slap room instead.

There is a percentage of tenants (it used to be around 10%) who pay market rent. They’ve either been there since the last Nat govt’s market rent days, or they’re renting in areas with low demand from low income renters. The old Home Buy scheme (all this has happened before & all this shall happen again) was aimed at them, maybe this one is too.

No one asking that question. Not important is it. Just rush off to the ideology back-slap room instead.

Well, you voted the dumbo’s in, can’t complain they’re wasting your money later on. An really, if you think apprieciation of property and maintenance of it comes from ownership you really need more life experience.

Part of the solution to this should be an incentivisation for people to use the crutch provided by subsidised housing to get themselves into either home ownership or commercial rentals. This policy goes some way towards providing that incentive but i fear that the reluctance to place a time or income limit on state house tenancy will mean that only those who have used the crutch effectively will provide the pool of potential purchasers. The majority will relax in the comfort of the security blanket provided by the state and will remain as “state house qualifiers” for the forseeable future.

It is easy to see the problem but I must admit that finding the answer is somewhat more difficult if the term “politically acceptable” is used as a qualifier.

“The real concern is that they are sold and the money from it is then just allocated to a general pool and the public housing sector shrinks.”

With this from the Minister of Housing:

“All the money Housing New Zealand earns from the sale of a home to a tenant will be reinvested back into a replacement state house … One family will buy a home, and as a result, another deserving family on Housing New Zealand’s waiting list will get a state home.”

This reads to me like the money will be allocated into a very specific pool – for replacing every house sold with a new house – in which case the public housing sector wouldn’t shrink at all.

It would be refreshing to see another tack set on the housing issue. Partnerships between Government, Local Authorities, and the private sector could develop housing for lease (perhaps integrated with ownership).

To overcome the ‘capital gain’ reason for buying a house, instead of ‘dead money’ rent, the terms of the lease could be set at say 10% of historical cost plus the rate of inflation. Some profit to the lessee when they wanted to move could come from a ‘sale’ of the benefit of the pegged rent either back to the owners, who could then charge market rent, or sold to the incoming tenant. Or a blend of both.

There must be lots of innovative ways help shift the Kiwi home ownership obsession, because the dream is often a nightmare, as rising mortgagee sales well testify.

As the Greens’ Sue Bradford put it, “Houses which are sold can be back on the market quickly, with investors and developers reaping profits. This happened in the 1990s,” she said, “and I’m sure it will happen again now.”

I used to have a bit of time for Sue Bradford – she had some fire in her belly and a lot of drive, even if I didn’t always agree with the direction she was driving. Now she’s become a naysayer who can’t see beyond her own rigid worldview and thinks we all need telling what to do.

The Australian First Home Owner’s Grant (now worth around $21,000 in some circumstances) comes with a simple clause in the contract – if you accept the money you must live in the home yourself and not sell it for at least a year. If there’s concern that state houses will just be turned over quickly for profit, seeing the residents back in the rental market, then it’s simple enough for the government to tag the deal with a similar proviso.

But of course Bradford is now so locked into the mindset of much of the left (but also, alas, many on the right) – that people are incapable of realising what’s in their own best interest and thus need the dead hand of the state to control every aspect of their lives – that creative compromise is seemingly beyond her.