Written By: - Date published: 3:46 pm, December 2nd, 2011 - 74 comments
This post is intended to do more than merely generate discussion. It’s a serious proposition seeking action. Its intent is to lay out or sign post (at least some of) the basic or necessary legal and social structures of a Community Collective comprised of both workers and housing collectives that would enable people to assume meaningful control over aspects of their futures.
Written By: - Date published: 5:50 pm, November 12th, 2011 - 54 comments
In 2005 Labour wrote to State House tenants with a warning “Don’t let National sell your house.” We were criticised for scaring people. Now Tamaki residents have got the real letters. And the boot. Same old National.
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, September 2nd, 2011 - 17 comments
National promised to get tough ‘undeserving’ state house tenants. (always someone to get tough on when maintaining the privileges of the elite) The first targets were 3 women and their kids, judged guilty by association with their partners who were charged with burglary (the charges were dropped). 2 years and $1m wasted and the government has given up.
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, August 22nd, 2011 - 24 comments
Seems like Key isn’t interested in listening to Christchurch quake victims.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, July 26th, 2011 - 69 comments
Why has the government delayed the second phase of Christchurch’s heating programme for two months? Could the timing be any worse?
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 pm, July 6th, 2011 - 131 comments
There can’t be many Kiwis who don’t know about the severity of the leaky homes crisis. Or can there? Oh don’t worry, he’s only the PM after all…
lprent: pushed this up the page again now that the program has aired.
Written By: - Date published: 3:26 pm, June 28th, 2011 - 25 comments
No Right Turn on the Nats’ cynical plans. “And its here that National’s true goal becomes apparent: they’re planning to effectively gut the state housing system…”
Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, June 24th, 2011 - 10 comments
Amazing what political pressure can do. Christchurch package was clearly put together in the space of a couple of days. Buy-out at GV the obvious basic solution but will see many out of pocket. Option 2 is an admission of that but only open to some. None of the fish-hooks have been worked out. What’s Gerry been doing all this time?
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, June 24th, 2011 - 69 comments
The buy out offer comes as a relief for many (but not all) of the red zone residents. Twice as many are still in limbo. The fate of the uninsured will be a major issue. Is an uninsured resident of Avonside any less deserving of government help than an investor in a dodgy finance company?
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, June 23rd, 2011 - 134 comments
Eddie called it. Christchurch announcement is today. There are very high hopes. Points to watch: how many in the ‘don’t know’ category & are payouts at pre-quake market values? Notable release is this afternoon just before Key leaves. Makes it difficult to get reaction from residents in time for TV news and follow-up with Key. This post will be updated after release.
Written By: - Date published: 1:22 am, April 30th, 2011 - 63 comments
The government has spent $1 million so far on 350 campervans for Christchurch. One person stayed in them. For that money, better to put them up at Premier House and commute them by Iroquois. There is a massive housing need in Christchurch but the campervans were so shitty and expensive people preferred overcrowded or damaged houses.
Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, April 22nd, 2011 - 46 comments
Here’s some images of emergency housing from Japan and from Christchurch. I wonder if you can spot the difference.
Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, April 8th, 2011 - 55 comments
The Nats are taking far too long to act on accommodation after the Christchurch quake. Japan accomplished more in 2 weeks than we have so far managed in 6 weeks and counting. While they build, we dither…
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, March 21st, 2011 - 17 comments
On Friday, the government sent out a Request for Proposal for building companies to build 2,500 temporary modular homes in Christchurch. It looks like step towards the rebuilding plan I and others have been suggesting for the past couple of weeks. Now, lets see an aggressive timetable and a plan for what comes next.
Written By: - Date published: 11:01 pm, March 16th, 2011 - 96 comments
Me & others: How come the government seems to have no plan for rebuilding Christchurch or desire to get one?
Righties: Well, um, Key’s awesome and, anyway, what’s your plan, smart-arse ?
Me: I’m not the government, rebuilding Christchurch isn’t my job. But here’s where I would start.
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, March 11th, 2011 - 125 comments
Mayor Bob Parker has described landlords hiking rents in Christchurch as “looting by another name”. I think the majority of us would feel as Parker does — it seems simply wrong to exploit people for profit in a time of tragedy. But look around. It’s just unregulated capitalism in action. There’s an awful lot of it about.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 10th, 2011 - 66 comments
Facing a housing shortage in Auckland now and a massive rebuilding programme in Christchurch to come, the Government has announced the biggest public building initiative since World War 2. Thousands of unemployed young people will be paid to train as apprentices in building trades and contribute to their country’s future.
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 pm, March 7th, 2011 - 52 comments
ChrisH submitted this incredibly knowledgeable and well-researched post on the rebuilding of Christchurch a few days ago. The announcement that large parts now lower-lying eastern suburbs will be abandoned lends more strength to his call for a visionary urban plan for the new, more resilient Christchurch. And Phil Goff has the history to present it.
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, March 3rd, 2011 - 46 comments
As the long haul gets under way in Christchurch there are going to be many flash points for conflict. One of the first to emerge is the tension between landlords and tenants, as the following selection of articles makes clear.
Written By: - Date published: 1:36 pm, February 7th, 2011 - 33 comments
Owning your own home was the foundation of the “Kiwi dream”. Now it seems that we’ve let that dream slip further out of reach than almost anywhere in the world. Houses in Auckland are less affordable than in New York. Demand in the rental market is far outstripping supply. What should the government be doing?
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 pm, January 20th, 2011 - 31 comments
Overcrowding is a big problem that drives disease and prevents kids getting the best start in life. Normally, I would say that the solution to overcrowding is more state housing – eco-smart housing, which would also create jobs. But an interesting article in the Guardian recently by George Monbiot suggests another solution.
Written By: - Date published: 11:12 pm, January 10th, 2011 - 92 comments
No, this post isn’t about Smile and Wave’s failure to close the gap with Australia. It’s about the widening gap between the tiny elite in this country and the rest of us. Even before the Great Recession, 10% controlled more wealth than the rest of us combined. The housing market shows that their wealth is still rising while ours falls.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, December 17th, 2010 - 37 comments
Three government investment decisions in the last couple of weeks have shown the deficiencies in the neoliberal way of doing things. SOE Solid Energy’s lignite-to-liquids obsession, Kiwirail buying trains in China rather than making them itself and Steven Joyce decision to re-create Telecom’s monopoly by giving it 70-84% of the broadband contracts.
Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, December 10th, 2010 - 8 comments
The sum Phil Heatley has so far spent trying to get three women and their families evicted from their state houses, an effort to look tough, is the equivalent to the cost of building two new state houses. Over half a million spent on an ultimately pointless exercise – one that’s far from finished.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, November 12th, 2010 - 12 comments
House prices are a good indication of how the economy is going. They rose rapidly in the 2000s, stalled in 2007, plummeted in 2008, and made a slight recovery in 2009. Now they’re heading down again. The median house price is over 16% below the peak in late 2007 and I reckon they’ve got a long down way to go yet.
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, November 11th, 2010 - 107 comments
Matt McCarten and his team took over a vacant state house in Mana to install a young couple who were previously living in a garage. Four supporters were soon arrested. The media are calling this action a “stunt”. To do so is to diminish the significance of the issue to which it was drawing attention. Call it a protest. People are living in squalor while state houses sit empty. Why?
Written By: - Date published: 10:35 am, October 26th, 2010 - 18 comments
It’s not surprising that the Housing Shareholders Advisory Group came to the conclusions it did. Despite its name, the group included no state house tenants. It was a group packed with private social housing providers, hand-picked to deliver the conclusion that these groups should be given control of state houses.
Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, September 21st, 2010 - 26 comments
On Thursday, our new dictator Gerry Brownlee decreed by Order in Council that the following Acts of Parliament were amended: the Building Act, the Local Government Act, the Resource Management Act, various pieces of transport legislation, and the Civil Defence Act. Most of the changes deal with minutiae of government. Some are less innocuous.
Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, September 12th, 2010 - 17 comments
In today’s, Sunday-Star Times, Rob Stock picks up on a topic I’ve been writing about: “THE EARTHQUAKE has exposed a policy that must be changed immediately – the way the Earthquake Commission is funded.Significant numbers of people will get nothing from the commission because it is funded by a levy on house insurance.”
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, September 12th, 2010 - 71 comments
The Government has announced it intends to push through emergency legislation to expedite the rebuilding of Christchurch. The urge to put things back the way they were is only natural in the wake of a huge physical and psychic shock but shouldn’t we have a think about how we want Christchurch rebuilt before we let anyone go ahead willy-nilly?
Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, September 11th, 2010 - 20 comments
The Napier Earthquake led to the earthquake-resistant building standards that have proven so valuable in Christchurch. The EQC was founded after the Wairarapa Earthquake. World War 2 and the threat of air raids led to the creation of Civil Defence. What lessons can we learn from the Christchurch Earthquake? Better standards building on around liquefaction-prone ground seems like a priority.
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