Decent housing still needed despite change of attitudes
The imminent sale of pensioner housing by the Hamilton City Council to social providers is a worrying mirror decision of that taken by the Government to sell off an estimated 2000 state houses.
Both decisions are probably fiscally prudent, but they both also appear to be contrary to a longstanding social commitment to people who have always found it difficult to afford sound basic housing.
Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett will not make a commitment that all money earned from the sale of state houses would go back into housing.
Perhaps she and many others need a reminder of what living conditions were like for many people not so very long ago.
Those of us old enough to remember the 1950s may recall the dreadful conditions some people lived in then.
Several of my classmates of those long ago days lived in so-called houses that resembled high country musterers’ huts, with an open fireplace at one end for cooking, rough bunks along the walls and a few wooden boxes for furniture. Some of these dwellings would not be deemed suitable for storing hay in today.
They were unlined, or only partially lined, corrugated iron-clad sheds and some had packed dirt floors.
Many had no running water and toilets were a long-drop dunny in the backyard.
These conditions had long been recognised by local authorities and central government as a serious risk to health.
The Hamilton Borough Council was one of the first in the country to try to tackle the problem as early as 1919, when Mayor F W Watts wanted to build little houses to rent. His plan proved unprofitable and was replaced with a scheme to provide low-interest first mortgages and council-owned sections to build on. The scheme lasted only a short while, but it was the start of a longstanding commitment by Hamilton to ensure at least some of the people on low incomes had access to decent housing.
Later, the State Advances Corporation followed that example with low-cost mortgages and, by the late 1930s, the first really successful government-sponsored housing scheme was launched. In 1937, the first well-constructed houses with all the basic necessities of running water, electricity and flush toilets were being provided by central government at affordable rents.
The intention was to give tenants an opportunity to save to buy their own homes and to replace the primitive housing of thousands of New Zealand families. World War II slowed the programme for a while and, by the 1950s and early 1960s, there were families still living in substandard houses in many remote rural areas, particularly in the North Island.
State houses from this era were not built as income-returning investments or to provide profit opportunities for property speculators. They were investments in the future health and welfare of families struggling on low incomes who would otherwise be living in hovels.
This laudable government-funded scheme has all but been destroyed by speculators, mismanagement, unregulated market forces, rent subsidies and a shortage of new state houses. Today, the old tin huts have gone only to be replaced by equally unhealthy garages, sheds and caravans for a new generation of people who, for reasons mostly beyond their control, cannot afford even the simplest of modern houses.
Instead of state houses, the Government now provides rent subsidies to tenants of approved community housing providers at the same level as people in Housing New Zealand properties and they no longer talk about state housing but social housing. Selling state houses to these community providers to build a few smaller state houses will fall far short of solving the problem.
For past generations, a first house was not an investment to be on-sold at a profit or the first step on the real estate ladder. It was a home for a lifetime and in some cases two and even three generations of family lifetimes.
Now we have, in our major cities, some of the most unaffordable houses in the Western world and prices well beyond the reach of most young families throughout the rest of the country.
In Hamilton the 17 pensioner units gave home security for many elderly people, but if they are sold, there may not be security of tenure.
We don’t need rent subsidies and we can’t afford an unregulated residential real estate industry open to foreign speculators. We need many more state houses at affordable rents to give families time to save for the deposit on their own homes.
The model was set in the 1930s and the need hasn’t changed.