New Zealand budget: housing shortfall puts vulnerable people at risk, say advocates
New Zealand’s most vulnerable people have been neglected by the government as it desperately attempts to kickstart the economy following a sevenweek lockdown, advocates say.
The country of 5 million has been in strict lockdown for seven weeks and the International Monetary Fund is predicting the economy could contract by as much as 8%, while thousands have joined the dole queue during the pandemic.
Community housing advocates, mental health groups and some Māori representatives say the 2020 Budget “falls short” of caring for the country’s most needy, and prime minister
Jacinda Ardern’s promise to measure success against the population’s wellbeing is being overlooked in the crisis of Covid-19.
There are 15,000 people on the waiting list for a state house – a record high in the country – and only 8,000 new state houses announced on Thursday by finance minister Grant Robertson, a blow for the homeless as winter approaches and more people look for shelter.
Earlier in the year, the UN special rapporteur on housing visited New Zealand and called the shortage and poor quality of housing “an urgent human rights crisis” with families living in cars, tents and garages.
“The government’s announcement of an additional 8,000 public and transitional houses falls well short of what’s needed to fix New Zealand’s housing crisis,” says Scott Figenshow, the chief executive of Community Housing Aotearoa.
“Many families will have experienced job losses, evictions or other forms of material hardship during New Zealand’s Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and the number of people on the waiting list for social housing will almost certainly have risen.”
“We’ve been calling for 15,000 additional social housing places since 2014. If we had those places now, that would go some way to reducing the misery of homelessness that we are continuing to see.”
Dr Lucy Telfar Barnard, a senior research fellow in the housing and health research programme at the University of Otago, agreed.
“I don’t see anything in this budget to help improve the standard of people in poor quality rental homes, where our most vulnerable households live, and where new healthy housing legislation can only do so much.”
Tina Ngata, a Māori commentator, said there is “still some catching up to do before they [the government] meet their campaign promises on housing,”
and while it was good to see funds going to Māori community groups such as Whanau Ora, it was “disturbing to see funds going into more prison beds”.
Māori accounts for more than 50% of the prison population, despite making up only 15% of the general population.
“As always, it will depend on how they partner with Māori to implement the budget, and partnering with Māori hasn’t been their strength,” Ngata said.
Mental health - a subject that was at the heart of the 2019 “wellbeing” budget, and of the Labour party’s 2017 election campaign - did not rate a mention in the news releases issued by the government about this year’s budget, or in the finance minister’s speech.
Shaun Robinson, the CEO of the Mental Health Foundation, said he was “disappointed and concerned” that progress in the sector could stall.
“One year down the track, not a mention,” he said.
There had been “clear discussions” with the government after $1.9bn was pledged for mental health over a four year period in the 2019 budget, Robinson said, in which ministers had promised, “there was more funding to come.”
While the government had intended the 2019 spending as a multiyear initiative, Robinson wanted to “argue against the idea that $1.9bn was enough and will fix the problem,” adding that the injection had followed 10 years of “underfunding” by the previous government.
But while mental health services had been left out, the initiatives to create jobs in this year’s budget would provide immense mental health support to many, he said.