Housing costs punish children
An article in The Timaru Herald on Wednesday, stated that 4100 more children in New Zealand are living without items such as two good pairs of shoes and fresh fruit and vegetables.
The Government has launched a $5.5 billion, yes billion, Families Package, to help alleviate this problem by hoping to reduce the 16.5 per cent of children in poverty to 10 per cent.
One in eight children were counted as living in ‘‘material hardship’’, living in homes that lacked shoes, the ability to see a doctor and pay power bills. One in five children living below the medium income, (currently $1016 a week), before housing costs line.
This represents one in four Ma¯ ori and one in five Ma¯ ori and Pacific children.
The Children’s Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft, said the Government needed to spend its surplus and increase benefit levels.
How many of these people that can not afford to feed and clothe their children bother about having a vegetable garden or plant a few fruit trees to supply their own needs?
Perhaps if they curtailed their spending on alcohol, tobacco, drugs and gambling they might not have to rely on benefits and other government handouts.
Or perhaps they should only have as many children as they can afford.
Why should the Government supply them with houses to live in when all people and parents have the same opportunities for education and employment and to save their wages to buy their own houses?
If the cost of houses is too expensive where they live, there are numerous other areas in New Zealand where the cost of houses is many thousands of dollars cheaper.
It seems there are now generations of men and women in New Zealand who have never been employed, who expect it is their right to demand that housing be supplied to them and to live on government benefits.
D H Darling, Timaru