NZ housing crisis hits home

Clare Curran.

It may shock you to learn that in Mosgiel a young family is living in a garage. Their son has a medical condition and needs the family's 6-year-old Labrador for companionship.

Both parents work but finding an affordable house in Mosgiel that will accept the dog has become impossible. Lending constraints prevent them from buying their first home.

They are one of many families with children with special needs who will tell you staying at the same school is not a choice but a necessity given their learning needs. After three months of looking, they failed to find somewhere suitable so they have moved in with family and live in the garage.

I recently publicly stated the housing crisis had moved to Dunedin. This ruffled a few feathers as the widely accepted view is that Dunedin is one of the most affordable places for first-home buyers. But if you're a first-home buyer on a low income in Dunedin it's a different story as you have to stump up with a 20% deposit, thanks to the Auckland overheated market. If you are renting, it's getting really hard.

I recently met with the Salvation Army and Presbyterian Support and their experiences back up these claims. High numbers of people are unable to find an affordable rental, no state housing is available, and motels, unsuitable boarding housing and cheaper hotel accommodation is used as stopgap emergency housing.

People are being forced to take rentals at prices they can't really afford, in parts of the city, uprooting their family support and children's schooling. There is a growing practice of ''taking in a lodger'' being resorted to by single mums, potentially putting them and their children at risk.

My office is trying to help a mum of three who, after two weeks in a hotel, has rented a house at $415 a week. She took the house as it has a fourth bedroom so she could take in a boarder to help cover costs.

Then there's the grandmother raising her grandchild on her own, struggling to put food on the table after rent costs leave her with $47 a week to live on.

We know Dunedin rents are up 16% in the past year, from $350pw to $407pw on average. We also know that Dunedin house prices are up 16% as well, from $311,000 to $359,000.

If household incomes were also rising comparably, this wouldn't be an issue. But the average household income in Otago actually fell 1% in the past year, from $1559pw to $1538pw.

If you're on a low income and your lease ends, then finding an affordable house is really hard. Once upon a time, there were state houses for those who found it hard to afford private sector rents.

In Dunedin, at the end of September last year, there were 55 families on the state house waiting list. Yet, 26 state houses have lain empty for between a year and more than three years, all pending sale. These include the Murray St flats in Mosgiel, actually apartment blocks, or around three per site. Instead of refurbishing them or bowling them over and rebuilding, the Government has chosen to try to sell them. They have been empty eyesores for years and once sold, the money won't be reinvested here.

It's almost impossible to get on the Housing NZ list and you have to be ''actually homeless'' to even get a look in.

The Government, through Housing NZ and the Ministry of Social Development, takes the view our community will just ''put up'' with this situation and people won't make a fuss. Well I'm making a fuss because it's shocking Dunedin families are forced into garages, motels and unaffordable rentals, or places with holes in the floors and mould on the walls.

A 2016 report prepared by MSD on the material wellbeing of New Zealand households using non-income measures shows, since 2009, the percentage of households in the lowest income group spending more than 30% of their income on housing has risen from 38% to 43%. For those on the highest incomes, the proportion has dropped from 17% to 9%.

A report reluctantly released two weeks ago under the Official Information Act on the findings of a review into implementation of the Government's social housing reforms, shows no overall plan, no co-ordination, targets plucked out of thin air, no-one in charge. Responsibility is spread across at least three ministers and none of them has a clue what is happening.

The Government's failure on housing is really hurting New Zealand, not just in Auckland. We are short 60,000 houses nationally and the shortage is growing at more than 1000 houses a month. Houses are unaffordable and rents are skyrocketing, squeezing family budgets. Record numbers of families are homeless, living in motels, garages and cars.

What's Labour going to do about it? Our plan is to build 100,000 affordable homes for first-home buyers, ban foreign speculators who use our houses as gambling chips, and construct thousands of state houses for families in need.