Joe Trinder  Mana News editor

New Zealand simply doesn’t have enough homes for every kiwi family under the National government they have managed to build literally  7 houses for a population of 4.5 Million people. The basic reason why the National party avoid building houses is their donors are property investors with a lack of housing they can over charge and maximise their profit.

Another reason why the National government refuse to build more state housing is they are gentrifying suburbs to increase the current property value. Gentrifying basically means move poor brown people out and replace them with the wealthy gentry. Under National segregation is getting worse poor families are being forced to move into segregated communities in South Auckland.

Fortunately Mana has solutions for the housing crisis in its policies build 10,000 houses every year until the housing crisis is over this will prevent high market rentals and property developers making a small fortune at the expense of struggling families. Stop the sale of state houses in a housing crisis it makes no sense to sell state housing when we need to build more homes.

Mana also wants to develop a new  home ownership scheme that would provide low interest loans to low and middle income families. The dream of owning your own home is unrealistic for many New Zealand family’s because many can’t save enough for the deposit when a 20% deposit that is mandatory by the bank is $80,000. For many families this amount of saving is simply unachievable.

The privileged few that can afford this type of deposit often come from generational wealth where they can leverage their  mortgage off their parents’ home or their parents have amassed enough wealth to assist with a deposit. The problem is there are more New Zealanders that don’t have this background and will be renting for the remainder of their lives.

The New Zealand property market is a bubble that will burst, interest rates can’t remain this low for ever as our government debt has ballooned in excess of $60 billion dollars. Eventually treasury will default on this loan because no small south pacific country can afford to borrow without restraint.

If the National Party do embark on a first home buyer scheme the houses won’t be affordable they will delegate this to property developers that are “friends”. These homes wont lower the cost of rental’s or remedy the housing crisis they will simply enrich property developers. This is a lack of long term economic vision in exchange for short term gains, if they want long term economic development we should encourage investment in New Zealand owned companies that will expand and provide employment .

As the National government continues to lack vision and innovative ideas or even a willingness to address the housing crisis. This crisis will get worse as more  families are going to start living out of cars or caravan parks and many New Zealanders will never achieve the dream of home ownership. At Mana we believe homes should be strictly for families not property speculation.