Estimates Debate — Vote Housing

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā tātou e te Whare i roto i Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. I am happy to stand and take a call on the estimates for housing, although it must be said that this year’s budget for housing was underwhelming, to say the least. I am very pleased to have the Minister of Housing in the chair. The duration of my speech is roughly the length of time that he allowed himself to be questioned before the Social Services Committee at estimates this year. Guarded by the very good chairpersonship of Katrina Shanks, the Minister of Housing spent most of his time recounting stuff he could see on the Housing New Zealand Corporation website, and answering questions as slowly as was physically possible in order to chew up the time so that he did not have to face questioning of his appropriation from members of the Opposition. I have 5 minutes—well, I have 4½ minutes now—and I want to try to make sure that we get an adequate look at this appropriation. We did not get one at the select committee this year, which was a shame.

The first thing we look at is State housing. Last year the Minister Phil Heatley made such a song and dance about this issue. He said he was going to fix it. He leapt up and down; we enjoyed the demonstrations in Parliament every single week. Where has that gone? All the money for new State houses has gone. In fact, the Housing New Zealand Corporation has been told that it will have to find savings in its baseline appropriation in order to fund new housing and maintenance. I am pleased that the Minister seems to think he has fixed the housing problem in New Zealand in 1 year. The recession is over for him, but I say to the Minister that the recession is not over for the 11,000 families sitting on the Housing New Zealand Corporation waiting list right now—11,000 families. The Minister has come up with an options and advice service. It appears that the main thrust of the options and advice service is to get people off the Housing New Zealand Corporation waiting list and push them into the private sector, whether or not they can afford it.

I have spoken to emergency accommodation providers like Monte Cecilia Housing Trust. They tell me that options and advice clients are turning up on their doorstep and they have lost everything. They have lost everything. They were put into accommodation they could not sustain, they were not told that they might be eligible for a Housing New Zealand Corporation home, and they ended up losing all their Work and Income entitlements in terms of advances. They lost their money because they had to leave a property that they could not afford. I asked this Minister why he does not just do a needs assessment for every person who comes into the Housing New Zealand Corporation. Those who are category C and D can be put through options and advice—fair enough—and those who are category A and B and who will probably get a State house can be put through that process. He refuses to do that. The only thing I can draw from that is that options and advice is all about keeping people off waiting lists.

We also have a reconfiguration of State housing. The Minister has identified 20,000 State houses that he thinks can be reconfigured, which means sold. People from the community housing sector tell me that they believe that the Minister expects them to pick it up. A lot of them have said to me that he is in la-la land if he thinks they can afford to pick up 20,000 State houses off the Government. But I am pleased to know that the Minister has promised that there will be absolutely no net reduction in State housing in New Zealand.

This Minister has actually done nothing to address the issue of supply of housing in New Zealand. The fact is that he is building far fewer State houses than the former Labour Government did every single year, yet the demand is growing. He has done nothing for affordable housing. Labour set up a shared equity pilot for 2 years. Of those 24 months, 20 months were under that Minister, Phil Heatley. What did he tell the Housing New Zealand Corporation? He told it not to promote the pilot and not to tell people it exists. At the end of the pilot he said he was getting rid of it because of the low uptake. Well, the low uptake was probably because the Housing New Zealand Corporation was told not to tell New Zealanders that it was there. The shared equity scheme is gone. The Gateway Housing scheme that we have been promised since the election has yet to eventuate; it got no funding in this year’s Budget. The Minister has done nothing for affordable housing.

We have been privy to wonderful displays of emotion and theatre in the House regarding State housing, but the reality is that more and more people are coming through our offices unhappy with Housing New Zealand Corporation. There are Housing New Zealand Corporation staff with 1,000 cases. There are tenancy managers with 1,000 cases. I say to the Minister that that is not good enough. That does not mean that that front-line service is adequately serving the public, as it should be.

On the issue of homelessness, the Minister has continued to block a select committee inquiry into homelessness that Labour has been calling for, that the Coalition to End Homelessness has been calling for, and that the sector has been calling for. He thinks it is OK that during the Rugby World Cup boarding-house tenants will be kicked out of their homes. I say to the Minister that it is not good enough.

Mr Chairman, tēnā koe. Tēnā tātou katoa. One of the good things about not being in the mainstream parties is that one listens to these debates that go on, and one compares the previous Government with this Government. I have to say that the performance of the previous Government in housing was not all that hot.

Today at question time there was a debate about the unacceptably high levels of rheumatic fever in Māori, Pasifika, and high-deprivation communities. Approximately 146 people die per year from the complications of this condition, and the majority of them are Māori and Pasifika. But although the ongoing treatment is estimated to be costing the health sector at least $10 million per year, the reality is that this is a condition of poverty and also of very poor housing. It will take a lot more than just the health sector to get it right. Rheumatic fever is associated with poor living conditions, socio-economic deprivation, and overcrowded housing conditions.

The case of Porirua woman To’a Finau in my electorate is a classic example of the link between housing and health. The extreme dampness of her State house’s bedrooms forced the family of four to sleep in very cramped conditions in one room. Her son is only 15 months old, her 14-year-old daughter has chronic asthma, and she has a chronic heart condition. Insulation was supposed to be installed in September 2009, but 9 months later, in June this year, it still has not happened. However, I understand that in recent weeks the family has been moved.

It is useful to see up front in Vote Housing the recognition from this Minister of Housing that many of the existing State houses are not insulated and need to be modernised and reconfigured. I believe that this Minister will do a great job. I congratulate Minister Heatley on his assurances to the select committee that another 8,000 upgrades are planned, and the only concern I would have is that it is hard to understand quite where the resourcing might come from when the $124 million stimulus appropriation granted in 2009-10 has come to an end.

Of course, the condition of existing State houses is not the only issue of concern. Our concern is also about priority according to the State housing waiting list. There are some huge issues for us in terms of the number of whānau in severe and persistent housing needs. These whānau are seriously at risk because of their housing circumstances. Their housing is unsuitable, inadequate, or unsustainable. We know that 67 percent of Māori are renting or boarding, with approximately 72,000 Māori occupants residing in State houses. More than 55.7 percent of Māori living in State housing are under the age of 20, and we know also that Māori are particularly prevalent amongst the homeless. We are inevitably concerned when we learn of the intention to reduce the waiting list significantly to free up spaces on the waiting lists for people with real needs. The question we ask now is how real need is defined. Is it people located in overcrowded and inappropriate housing, young and vulnerable New Zealanders, or those who are homeless?

We also have some concerns about what will happen in the decision to encourage those applicants who no longer meet the category of housing need to apply in the open market for private rental accommodation. It cannot be overlooked that racial discrimination affects our access to housing. A couple of years ago the reality of racism in the housing market became known through the exposure in the media of a south Waikato landlord and a Tauranga property-owner, who declared that banning Māori tenants made good business sense and should be allowed. Such comments only scrape the surface of the levels of institutional racism that other researchers have identified. In this context, we would put forward to the Housing New Zealand Corporation the suggestion that it could play a role in mentoring potential tenants or by providing them with letters of reference, to support Māori, Pasifika, and ethnic minority tenants to enter the rental market on a strong footing.

Finally, we note the minor but significant paragraph placed at the end of the report, which outlines some of the great initiatives the Māori Party has been involved in. Thank you.

I will take the opportunity to respond to the good news from the Labour Party. I was intrigued when I read the report back from the Social Services Committee on the estimates for Vote Housing. After many weeks of consideration and hours of work in the committee, the report came back and we are debating it now. That report is four considered pages long—four considered pages of wisdom. At the very end there is a statement called the “New Zealand Labour minority view”—the Labour Party minority view, which Labour members put a tremendous amount of work into! I think it is worthwhile reading out to New Zealand what they said. Everyone else—ACT, the Māori Party, the National Party, and the Green Party, bless them—put in four pages of thoughtful consideration. The New Zealand Labour Party said this: “Labour members are concerned”—not about housing—“that the time allocated for the Estimates hearing did not allow us enough time to adequately scrutinise the appropriation.” That is the depth of thought there!

I decided to read the transcript of the select committee’s ½-hour interview with me. I can tell members that I spoke for three pages, as an introduction, and then there were six pages of questions where I was basically drilled. Of those questions, 28 came from the Labour member Moana Mackey, and the National members got to “mollycoddle” me three times. The question time during the estimates hearing was intense, I was held to account as I should have been, and Labour members had plenty of time to scrutinise the books. But unfortunately all they can do is criticise, put down, and produce no policy of their own.

One of the disappointing things for me when I became the Minister of Housing was that I celebrated the fact that the previous Labour Government had increased the number of State houses. I thought that was a good thing, but I discovered that the money it had used to increase the number of State houses had been taken from the depreciation fund, which had been several hundred million dollars over a 9-year period. That Government had used the money that was supposed to repair existing houses to purchase new ones, so current tenants are now living in houses that are in a serious state of disrepair—not insulated, with no heating, and falling to pieces—while Labour members are out on the streets bragging that they bought new houses.

For the National Government, John Key has said that that is enough. He has said that we will add to the State housing stock. In fact, in the last 2 years, as I reported to the select committee, we have added about 840 extra State houses, and that is net. That is not as many as Labour added, but at the same time we have upgraded just under 20,000 State houses—

💬 Hon Member: How many?

Twenty thousand. The very minimum we have done to them is insulate the floor and ceiling and, in many cases, put in clean heating. We have done a lot more than that in most cases. We have looked after current tenants, and we have new State houses for more tenants. We have thought of everyone. It is not easy to balance that.

Another thing we discovered was that across New Zealand we have several thousand three-bedroomed houses that we do not need. The Labour Government refused to sell those and buy one-bedroomed houses because a lot of people live alone. It also refused to buy five-bedroomed houses; a lot of Pasifika and Māori families, in particular, need large houses. So we are sitting with a housing stock full of three-bedroomed houses. We are going to divest them and acquire one-bedroomed and five-bedroomed houses. That is only sensible.

We will also make sure that houses are provided in areas of high need, not just in electorates where Labour wants to get voted in—not just in electorates where Labour wants State house tenants to vote for it. We will provide State houses where they are needed for families most in need, we will get the size of the house right, and the houses will be in a decent condition so that State housing tenants no longer live in squalor.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Women’s Affairs