Being able to live in an affordable, warm, dry and healthy home is pretty basic stuff – but it’s a measure by which the current National government continues to let New Zealanders down.
The facts speak for themselves: the average house price in Auckland is over $1 million, we have the lowest level of home ownership in New Zealand since the 1950s, and it won’t come as a surprise to readers of this magazine that many rentals are often not up to scratch.
I believe that things have swung too far out of balance in New Zealand. At the same time that many people are struggling to buy a home, or find a quality rental, wealthy speculators are making a tidy profit. This profit is coming at the expense of ordinary Kiwis, who expect nothing more than a fair shot at the Kiwi dream of home ownership.
It isn’t okay that working people and their families have to live in cars because they can’t afford rent. This is not the New Zealand that I grew up in. It is not the kind of country I expect anyone to be raised in – we must do something to address it.
The housing crisis in Auckland will be a central issue in this year’s election. It is spreading beyond Auckland and has come about because, for more than two decades, the market has failed to deliver affordable homes. With the average house price in Auckland becoming further out of reach for most people, and surveys consistently showing it to be one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, the issue desperately needs to be addressed. Other cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable too.
Unfortunately things are becoming worse for those who are studying today. According to last year’s Student Loan Annual Report, student debt is at $15 billion, up 50% under the current Government. This debt factors into people’s decision to delay home ownership, or put it off altogether. Debt is holding people back; the evidence is clear on that. 50 percent of people aged 25-40 owned their own home a generation ago. Now that rate sits at around 25 percent.
With high student debt and the housing market being almost impossible to break into, it is perhaps not surprising that many don’t see a future in New Zealand and head offshore. Labour has a plan to turn things around. We will introduce three years of free post-secondary education, which will reduce indebtedness. We will use economies of scale and the Government’s low cost of borrowing to build one hundred thousand affordable homes.
To address these challenges, government needs to be bold in its solutions. Labour will not shirk these problems. It’s about the kind of society we want to live in. I believe that we do best when everyone has the opportunity to get ahead, and is able to aspire to one day owning their own home.