Mana housing policy needs work

Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, June 21st, 2013 - 28 comments
Categories: housing, mana-party - Tags: ,

For a small party Mana are not afraid to come up with big policy!

Mana Party announces big housing plan

The Mana Party wants to build 10,000 state houses a year. …

Its policy includes reinstating the Maori Affairs Housing Scheme which ended in 1989. The scheme would be updated and administered through a restructured Te Puni Kokiri, Mr Nikora said. Under the former scheme, 23,500 houses were built and 5000 existing houses bought.

The party called for land to be made available to Maori in the same way it was being made available to local government and bodies to ease the Auckland housing crisis, he said. Maori first-home buyers would be able to buy homes with no deposit, at the same interest rates that Government pays and with negotiable mortgage terms. …

Mana Party leader Hone Harawira said the party had done no costings on the policy but believed affordable houses could be built for $200,000 each.

The Maori-only scheme as first announced was quickly modified:

Mana’s housing policy ‘open to all NZers’

The Mana Party now says its policy to build 10,000 cheap houses a year would be for all New Zealanders, not just Maori. …

They would be paid for by the government and sold for $200,000 each, with no deposit and low interest rates.

The policy hasn’t been fully costed but party leader Hone Harawira says it would take $30 million to start it up – although at a cost of $200,000 that would build only 150 houses.

Mr Harawira says the houses would be sold to struggling Maori and Pakeha families. “Our intention is to try to target certain levels for Maori,” he said on Radio New Zealand on Friday. “The housing policy isn’t just for Maori, it’s for all New Zealanders.”

It’s ambitious. It leaves National’s inaction looking increasingly isolated and out of touch on housing. But there are too many gaps in this policy as currently stated. Needs work.

28 comments on “Mana housing policy needs work ”

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  1. Winston Smith 1
    21 June 2013 at 1:58 pm

    It’s ambitious.
    – Thats one word for it

    It leaves National’s inaction looking increasingly isolated and out of touch on housing.
    – No, it makes Hone look out of touch with reality

    But there are too many gaps in this policy as currently stated. Needs work.
    – This may well be the understatement of the year, the costings make Labours costings look well-thought ouk

    • weka 1.1
      21 June 2013 at 2:07 pm

      “- No, it makes Hone look out of touch with reality”

      No, it makes Hone look in touch with Ikaroa-Rawhiti voters.

      • marty mars 1.1.1
        21 June 2013 at 2:14 pm

        Wise words weka 🙂

      • Winston Smith 1.1.2
        21 June 2013 at 2:43 pm

        I reluctantly concede that is a good point

        • Colonial Viper 1.1.2.1
          21 June 2013 at 3:14 pm

          You are a man of reason, it appears.

          On another note I don’t believe that the number of houses or the price of the houses is the most groundbreaking part of this policy…it’s this:

          first-home buyers would be able to buy homes…at the same interest rates that Government pays

          i.e. less than 4% p.a. This cuts the retail banksters right out of the system. They will push back against this very very hard.

          • Winston Smith 1.1.2.1.1
            21 June 2013 at 3:22 pm

            Are mortgage rates high at the moment because I don’t think they are. Yes I’d like the rates to be lower (of course) but if rates stayed like this for the next 10 years I’d be pretty pleased.

          • Melb 1.1.2.1.2
            21 June 2013 at 3:43 pm

            So the Government is to establish subprime lending without the appropriate interest rate to offset the increased risk? That’ll be good for the books.

            • Colonial Viper 1.1.2.1.2.1
              22 June 2013 at 12:18 pm

              Subprime? Sorry, where did you get the idea that these were going to be undocumented, unrepayable or “liars loans”?

          • Draco T Bastard 1.1.2.1.3
            22 June 2013 at 1:05 am

            And if the government printed the money that it used then that interest rate would be ZERO. The banksters would be really screaming then – oh, wait, they already have been when the Greens put forward their policy of government created money.

      • Rogue Trooper 1.1.3
        22 June 2013 at 11:56 am

        MANA are well represented in publicizing their cadidate for the by-election; flags, signs and whanau to be seen everywhere; David Shearer reached approx. 30 local tangata whenua while canvassing in Masterton.

    • McFlock 1.2
      21 June 2013 at 2:16 pm

      I think you forgot the “10,000 houses a year? It cannae be done, man!” objection.

      Pity – I’d have hit “Bingo” if you’d used it.

    • Draco T Bastard 1.3
      22 June 2013 at 1:02 am

      This may well be the understatement of the year, the costings make Labours costings look well-thought ouk

      Still better than National’s bullet point policy that had no costings at all.

  2. karol 2
    21 June 2013 at 2:28 pm

    Well this policy, at the moment, is focused on the by-election. And the Green Party has responded by saying their housing policy already is good for Maori and others.

    “The Green Party’s housing package offers the best solutions for Māori because it offers both debt free home ownership and gives whānau who rent a fair go too,” said Green Party Ikaroa-Rāwhiti candidate Marama Davidson.

    “The Green Party launched our Home for Life housing policy at Ratana at the beginning of the year. We have a long standing commitment to improving housing for Māori whānau.

    “Our housing policy allows whānau to rent to own their homes. So they don’t need to get a loan at all. A family’s normal rent payment becomes a payment towards owning their home.

    “The Green policy is a loan free and affordable way for whānau to own a home. Many Māori are paying rent to pay someone else’s mortgage. Under our plan, your rent would pay your own mortgage.

    “Our housing policy also helps those families who will still be renting by giving them more rental security so they can’t just be kicked out of their home.

    However, Davidson doesn’t mention state housing. However, <a href='http://www.greens.org.nz/policysummary/housing-policy-summary'expanding state housing, and income related rents are part of their housing policy.

    Providing secure and affordable social housing
    * Increase acquisition and building of state housing units by at least 3000 units a year for the next 3 years.
    * Maintain an income related rental policy of 25% of income for Housing New Zealand Corporation tenants.

  3. Murray Olsen 3
    22 June 2013 at 1:07 am

    The policy needs work? Great, that’ll help get people into employment.

  4. Rogue Trooper 4
    22 June 2013 at 11:53 am

    the tikanga under-building this proposal is a concept “the western mindset does not understand” -Hone Harawira.

    • Populuxe1 4.1
      22 June 2013 at 12:26 pm

      That seems to be his response whenever he puts his foot in his mouth. I don’t think it’s the case that “the western mindset does not understand” – the west didn’t conme to dominate the world for two centuries by not being able to, in Aristotle’s words, entertain a thought without agreeing with it. It’s more a matter of what is appropriate for a multicultural democracy irrespective of the important respect due the tangata whenua.

      In any case, Hone’s definition of tikanga seems very conservative and reductuve. Tikanga isn’t something codified – it’s a flexible and adaptive worldview, which is why Maori culture has ultimately weathered so much of what colonisation lobbed at it. Nor is it some total consensus – there is often disagreement on interpretation.

      If Hone really wants to achieve progress on behalf of his electorate and Maori in general, he’s going to have to ween himself off the divisive posturing. I think he’s in danger of alienating many Maori who may have close Pakeha family members and leaving himself wide open to being out-manouvered by the Greens.

      • ghostrider888 4.1.1
        22 June 2013 at 5:31 pm

        he has qualified and modified his stance; always first out of the gate, for his people, and understandably so; seen this 1 Law 4 All party campaign?, now there is some conservative reduction at the other end of the polls.(Aristotlean ethics do not appear to have been in the ascendency in the West) See the Archdruid / Spengler link C.V provided; a return to traditionalist superstition (that don’t bother me none), balanced out by Intellectual ethical systems.

        • Populuxe1 4.1.1.1
          23 June 2013 at 1:45 pm

          Perhaps he should think about the other groups in his party who voted for him in the belief that they represented their interests as well.

      • weka 4.1.2
        22 June 2013 at 6:06 pm

        Pop, I don’t disagree with much of what you say there, however it is pretty obvious that the Western mindset is starkly different from the Maori ones, and that many Pakeha not only don’t understand the Maori ones, but fail to see there is really is any difference.

        The little of I know of Te Ao Maori now shows me what I didn’t understand 5 or 10 years ago, let alone earlier in my life, or when I was growing up. But what I know now lies distinctly outside of the dominant culture I was raised and live in.

        In general Hone is right about Pakeha not getting it, although I do think that in this instance he/Mana were naive in how they presented the policy. Or maybe they were very clever, putting out the initial press release for the benefit of Maori, and the later one for the benefit of Pakeha 😉

        • Populuxe1 4.1.2.1
          23 June 2013 at 1:48 pm

          I suspect a lot of people have a rather limited and reductive understanding of the breadth, diversity and history of what constitutes ‘western’ thought.

  6. millsy 6
    22 June 2013 at 12:46 pm

    From where I am sitting, this looks like something along the lines of the Maori Affairs loans that were chopped in 1989?

    Anyone know why they were chopped? Seems to be they were a real hand-up rather than a hand out.

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