Housing a cause for concern

Record rates of prisoners and economy-distorting house prices should cause worry about the state of New Zealand say analysts from the Salvation Army.

Its latest report - Off the Track - also slams the government for our ‘‘entrenched’’ levels of child poverty.

Modest reductions have failed to measure up to bold changes promised, the Salvation Army’s report says.

The Sallies’ state of the nation report were somewhat at odds with Prime Minister Bill English’s own state of the nation speech, delivered last week.

English emphasised a need to boost police funding and forces, while numbers from the Salvation Army’s report indicated crime rates were much the same as last year and down from five years ago.

The report broke its findings down into five areas: crime and punishment, our children, work and incomes, social hazards, and housing.

Unsurprisingly housing was a bleak area, with Auckland’s 12-year high in housing consents ‘‘easily offset’’ by surging immigration.

Average house prices in the City of Sails topped $1 million in 2016, while rent increases outpaced income growth.

‘‘This is good or bad news depending on which side of the ownership divide people find themselves,’’ the Salvation Army’s report observed.

‘‘[And it has] resulted in a level of homelessness not seen in New Zealand in the lifetime of most Kiwis’’.

The report also raised concerns that child poverty rates ‘‘have become entrenched in New Zealand’s economic and social structure’’. Children facing severe material hardship jumped by 5,000 last year. Children in slightly less dire straits appeared to have slightly but steadily decreased since 2011, however.

The numbers of youths committing crimes stagnated in 2016; just under 1,900 under 16-year-olds were prosecuted, the same as in 2015.

Teenage pregnancy and infant mortality rates have been falling admirably.

A positive raised by the report was that New Zealand’s labour participation rate is the third highest in the OECD, at a record-setting 71 per cent.

Go to https://tinyurl.com/ hsvyhqv to read the full report.