The way we were: state housing in Mosgiel. PHOTO: ODT FILES As a teenager I never expected to own my own house. It was not something that appeared common where I lived. Instead, my dream was that when I started a family, I would try and get a state house. I was 6 months old when my parents moved into their first state house. Growing up I saw how my working-class parents were able to raise four children with a degree of security, underpinned by low state house rents. We still could not afford a car, but as we lived in Mosgiel we could walk, cycle or bus to wherever we needed to go. State housing, although cold, provided the security that with careful planning enabled a family like ours to flourish. Right-wing politicians have done an incredible job over the last 30 years of changing the meaning attached to living in a state house. Over the decades they have subtly changed the definition of ‘‘state housing’’ to that of ‘‘social housing’’. The difference in terminology matters and is deliberate. Much work has been done to re-educate the public’s attitudes to state/social housing so that [housing minister] Chris Bishop could now say that the target group for social housing is those with ‘‘addiction problems, or mental health, or disabilities or family violence survivors’’. However, when the first Labour government in the 1930s came into power, the purpose of state houses was to create affordable rentals for working-class families. State housing was first and foremost for ordinary New Zealanders. Being raised in a state house was a feature of National Party Prime Minister John Key’s back-story; his rise to fame inferred that his success was despite this upbringing. I felt this description was patronising, as surely that was the purpose all along — to give ordinary working families the opportunity to live secure productive lives so they could take the opportunities that living in New Zealand afforded them. Up until the 1980s, one of the effects of having large numbers of state houses was that it kept house rentals down for everyone. The 1993 National government changed it all by introducing market rents and the accommodation subsidy, which they said was to bring about fairness. It sounded compassionate but that was not its intention. The purpose was not to bring about fairer housing but to lessen the state’s involvement so that the private sector could pick up the slack and also pick up the profits. In the mid-1990s when working in public health in Dunedin, I was tasked with looking at government statistics on housing. I was shocked to find that rental costs were 20% higher for Māori families than Pākehā families. Most Māori lived in state houses and so, when in 1993 market rents were brought in, it appears that it was average Māori rents that went up first. Extensive state housing kept the rental market subdued. Landlords could not charge too much for rentals as they would be too far ahead of the market and find it more difficult to find tenants. Since then, some have blamed rising houses prices for rental increases, but others would argue that accommodation supplements and reducing the number of state houses has allowed landlords to increasingly raise house rentals much faster than the rate of inflation. Emma Vitz, an actuary for the insurance industry, did an analysis in 2021 to see if rental costs had aligned with inflation since the changes in state housing in 1993. Her findings were that rentals had almost doubled the rate of inflation. Over the last year the affordability of rents has slightly improved through higher wages and lower rentals, largely due to the decrease in immigrants coming to New Zealand and the increase of families moving to Australia, but this will be temporary. However, we have witnessed this coalition government favour landlords over tenants. We have seen the voracious attack on any suggestion of a capital gains tax, a $2.9 billion tax refund for the wealthiest landlords, limited tenure for state house tenants, and state house rental hikes. We had a degree of cruelty when the Minister of Finance mocked state house tenants as being lucky, akin to ‘‘winning Lotto’’. While she later issued a ‘‘statement of regret’’ over the caricature rather than an apology, the hypocrisy is that if anyone had ‘‘won the Lotto’’ it would be the $1 million in salary and expenses that she has ‘‘won’’ for three years as a Cabinet minister. This government’s proposed changes of increasing state housing rentals to pay for an increase in the accommodation supplement for private renters do not contribute to making housing costs fairer. They contribute to unaffordable rents for everyone because the effect is not to subsidise renters; they end up subsidising landlords as that is where the money usually ends up. • Anaru Eketone is a professor in social and community work at the University of Otago
