Homeless Housing.

Written By: - Date published: 3:19 pm, June 16th, 2017 - 24 comments
Categories: housing, International, Jeremy Corbyn, political alternatives - Tags: , ,

Jeremy Corbyn and senior Labour MPs have called for homes left vacant in Kensington and Chelsea by overseas investors to be “requisitioned” in order to rehouse those left homeless due to the Grenfell Tower fire.

Now, if that’s a permissible thing for a prominent politician to say in relation to people left homeless by a fire, then why not (it’s just a little stretch) also for others made homeless, or squeezed into ‘shoeboxes’ like sardines because of impossibly high rents? And if it’s permissible to talk of requisitioning vacant investor properties in the UK, then why not here too?

I think I’m liking Jeremy Corbyn’s no nonsense, common sense  approach to the world.

24 comments on “Homeless Housing. ”

  1. Anne 1

    I think I’m liking Jeremy Corbyn’s no nonsense, common sense approach to the world.

    Bugger the establishment and it’s pettifogging ways. Bugger PC gone mad. Bugger the crank theories and ideologies. Bugger the greedy and selfish. Let’s just govern on the basis of need and common-sense. What a lovely idea. Wonder no-one thought of it before …

  2. weka 2

    Depending on how empty houses get categorised, seems a reasonable idea to me.

  3. mary_a 3

    Great idea. Time to let common sense prevail now.

  4. Anne 4

    And here’s Jeremy Corbyn’s take on the homeless and needy right here in NZ.

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/333174/woman-living-in-leaky-bus

    Good on you Kelvin Davis.

  5. greywarshark 5

    Getting the money to make a proper survey would be valuable first step, then advising owners that their names would be published enabling the public to apply for rentals from them.

  6. One Anonymous Bloke 6

    Yep. Our homeless/child poverty/suicide statistics are a de facto state of emergency, and warrant emergency powers to deal with them.

  7. Kevin 7

    The Guardian is gushing over Corbyn these days.

    What a difference an election makes.

  8. Saarbo 8

    Noticed heaps of empty houses at Waihi Beach and thought exactly the same thing.

  9. Incognito 9

    Well, here in Middle Earth New Zealand we don’t like to frighten the horses 100 days out of an election, do we?

    We prefer to subsidise landlords and motel owners.

    We prefer to increase the minimum wage by 50 cts. to a whopping $15.75 per hour unless we can find a cheaper immigrant student employee whom we can fire willy-nilly.

    We prefer the status quo because that’s what we know best.

    We prefer the Kiwi Dream …

    Go TNZ! Wipe the grin of Jimmy Spithill’s face on Sunday!

  10. Keith 10

    Don’t worry everyone. The National Party are buying motels with our money to band aid the symptoms of a crisis they created.

    A spending abuse of epic proportions by a bunch of self serving half wits!

    • saveNZ 10.1

      And the homeless are forced to pay back the debt rung up, (which they probably will not be able to so the taxpayers are paying $1200p/w instead of the paid off state house that actually gave the taxpayer a return) to live in a dodgy overpriced and short term hotel.

      The victims of this government policy probably needing more health care from the stress of it all, so longer waiting times. Makes student loans seem like an amateur scam in retrospect.

      But hey, gets rid of the beneficiaries vote by making them homeless and unable to vote! If it keeps the Natz in power, anything goes!

    • greywarshark 10.2

      Well if they are self-serving half wits, what are we who continue support their vapid smiles and callous dodgy practices?

      If we are not half-waits or even quarter-wits and want to be bigger, wider and higher keep running these lines through your minds to vivify your failing psyches –
      (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sH0uR2u7Hs

      We are stardust, we are golden
      We are billion year old carbon
      And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

      Well, then can I roam beside you?
      I have come to lose the smog,
      And I feel myself a cog in somethin’ turning

      And maybe it’s the time of year
      Yes and maybe it’s the time of man
      And I don’t know who I am
      But life is for learning
      http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/crosbystillsnashyoung/woodstock.html

  11. saveNZ 11

    In less than 24 hours, the government’s promises to the Grenfell Tower victims are exposed as lies

    https://www.thecanary.co/2017/06/16/less-24-hours-governments-promises-grenfell-tower-victims-exposed-lies/

  12. Bill 12

    There are 1,399 empty houses in Kensington and Chelsea alone. Across London, there were 19,845 homes sitting idle for over six months in 2016.

    Anyone any idea what the corresponding numbers look like for NZ areas and cities?

    • weka 12.1

      Yes, I’ll dig them up. But harder to tell is which ones could be used for housing. Are we excluding holiday houses?

      • weka 12.1.1

        e.g.

        More unoccupied dwellings

        The number of unoccupied dwellings rose 16.4 percent between 2006 and 2013. There were:

        185,448 in 2013
        159,276 in 2006.

        In 2013, 1 in 10 dwellings were unoccupied. Nearly one-quarter were classified as unoccupied because all the occupants were temporarily away at the time of the census, but about three-quarters had no occupants at all.

        Every region had more unoccupied dwellings than at the last census, although there was little change in the Auckland region. The largest percentage increase was in the Canterbury region, which had 28,317 unoccupied dwellings in 2013, up from 18,117 in 2006. This was a 56.3 percent increase, and was related to the 2010–11 Canterbury earthquakes.

        http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-about-housing/occupied-unoccupied-dwellings.aspx

        Can’t find the Auckland or Welly numbers but here are some SI ones,

        “There are 46,590 occupied dwellings and 3,915 unoccupied dwellings in Dunedin City.

        There are 186 dwellings under construction in Dunedin City, and 9,756 under construction in New Zealand.”

        http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-about-a-place.aspx?request_value=15022&tabname=

        “There are 11,508 occupied dwellings and 4,467 unoccupied dwellings in Queenstown-Lakes District.

        There are 237 dwellings under construction in Queenstown-Lakes District, and 9,756 under construction in New Zealand.”

        http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-about-a-place.aspx?request_value=15000&tabname=

        • weka 12.1.1.1

          that’s from a previous thread. Not sure if those numbers are the ones unoccupied on census night and so count people just being away for the night (1/4 of those counted).

          • Bill 12.1.1.1.1

            So there are very substantial numbers of properties that are unoccupied and a goodly proportion of those can reasonably be assumed to be empty for the purposes of speculation and such like – ie, no-one is using them as an actual home.

            So ignoring distribution patterns for a moment, the actual number of houses in NZ in relation to numbers of people in NZ needing housed, might not be a problem at all. Having the financial means to access that supply obviously is.

            Yeah. If I ‘ruled the world’ there’d already be squatters rights on the statute books. But I don’t. And there isn’t. And squatting rights are another conversation anyway.

            • weka 12.1.1.1.1.1

              Yes, I’ve been saying this for some time. NZ doesn’t have a shortage of houses.

              It seems reasonable to me that in an emergency vacant investment housing should be used. I suspect we would find that in Chch people lived in cars while there were safe empty houses in the city. But how one would manage that at the societal or governance level I don’t know. I’d be interested to hear if Corbyn made suggestions on how it could be done.

  13. greywarshark 13

    Here is an item from the New Statesman going back to 2013 that has popped up in my searches. The powers that be have watched the unfolding disaster of inadequate and poorly regulated housing with the fascination of watching a Faradays ball. So near, so visible, and yet somehow separated and untouchable by human hands – ‘Help, Only the free market can save us!’. Keep bailing and send an SOS for more speculators.

    http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/09/how-can-we-solve-britains-housing-crisis

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