Is bearing poisoned fruit for many Kiwis
our low wage, low productivity economy.
It has been 1414 days since then-opposition leader Jacinda Ardern said: ‘‘I will always maintain that a successful economy is one that serves its people. Not the other way around. And that means judging success differently.’’
Over that time, the chasm of inequality has only grown.
Analysis by Charlie Mitchell in the Sunday Star-Times, published today, reveals New Zealand’s housing affordability problem is among the worst of all comparable developed nations.
House prices nationally are now 12.4 times the average wage. Home-ownership is at a 70 year low. Rents are at record high, rising by an average 4.5 per cent a year in the last decade.
In our capital, the number of people seeking emergency housing has tripled in a year. All around the country, motels are crammed with desperate families and around 400 children.
Four walls and a roof are no longer just shelter, protection and a home: housing is a commodity. Rising prices are profit, houses are an investment, and property is financialised.
This is a policy choice. Successive governments, including this one, have opted to protect capital and the drive to wealth accumulation, privileging the few, placating the middle just enough, and causing deep and lasting harm to the vulnerable.
Re-zoning, fixing the planning laws, building houses, changing the taxation of investment properties and fiscal intervention are all laudable.
But it is tinkering around the edges.
In that 2017 speech, to launch her election campaign, Ardern promised to lead by making bold calls.
De-commodifying housing would be an audacious intervention.
The housing unaffordability crisis intersects with other deepseated problems: inadequate health and unequal justice systems; rising mental illness; disparity in education and displaced communities.
Make housing a right, a duty of the state to ensure everyone has somewhere safe and permanent to live, and it would go a long way to levelling our unequal society. That would be a success to be judged by.
This is the tale of two cities: the best of times for those with skin in Auckland’s booming housing market; the worst of times for those struggling in our low wage, low productivity economy.
* Names have been changed.