It’s such a delight watching the Greens roll out progressive, left wing, green policy in election year. A fortnight ago they released their Ending Poverty Together plan, a suite of interconnected social security and tax policies with the bold-as-fuck goal of lifting all New Zealanders out of poverty: a Guaranteed Minimum Income, a tax free threshold, welfare reform, and taxing high wealth assets and income.
Last week they published fifty stories from people who have lived in substandard rentals. Yesterday they announced Our Pledge to Renters, the second suite of policies designed to lift everyone out of poverty.
Pledge to Renters:
Fair, affordable rent
Warm, dry, healthy homes
Thousands of new homes
Far too many of the 1.4 million people who rent in Aotearoa are forced to live with the constant stress of not knowing whether or not they will be able to pay the rent. Thousands are forced to pay through the roof to live in cold, damp, and unhealthy homes that are making them sick and lock them in poverty.
Right now, the rental market more closely resembles a game of monopoly than a public good – and it’s landlords who hold all the cards. This didn’t happen by accident. For decades, governments have made rules to prioritise those who own property and failed to protect people who rent.
The time is now for a Government that will show the political leadership necessary to make renting a home better for everyone.
The Green Party will put the interests of people before those of investment landlords, and build the high-quality, warm, affordable homes we need.
The gist of the policy,
There are summaries for the Pledge to Renters, and the House Build programme. The full policy document is here.
Some of this is a no brainer that won’t come as much of a surprise eg the rental WOF and the landlord register. The rent controls and the building programme are more likely to meet resistance.
Rent Controls
The policy sets rent increases at a maximum of 3% per year (details of how in the full document). The premise is that everyone should be able to rent a home knowing what the costs will be.
The Greens point out that 1/4 of renters pay more than 40% of their income on rent, whereas 30% is a commonly used measure of affordability. There has been an increase in rents beyond inflation and wage growth.
Increases above 3% would be allowed where major renovations are done excluding Healthy Homes requirements, and where there is an agreement beforehand between tenant and landlord eg a major kitchen or bathroom renovation.
The limits would also apply to new tenants, so landlords wouldn’t be able to hike rents between tenancies. This protects renters when moving homes.
House Building
The key components are the commitment to build 35,000 new warm, affordable homes, in the places people want to live, and that everyone on housing waiting lists will have a home within 5 years. How they will do it,
There is a lot of detail in this, so again, please refer to the full policy document for details. A few things stand out for me. One is the emphasis on building long term, sustainable social housing building systems. For instance long term government contracts to maintain building supplies, and requiring Kāinga Ora to run a building programme that anticipates need eg housing for the numbers of older people who will be retiring without owning their own home.
I’m also very pleased to see the emphasis on community housing with extends the number of houses being built outside of the private market beyond Kāinga Ora. One of the key ways to break the housing crisis is to increase housing that is not to be bought and sold for capital gains purposes. This subverts the current problem we have whereby new house builds push property prices, and thus rents, up.
An increase in community housing is crucial for meeting the immediate need of the public housing waiting list. In many countries, non-profit housing providers deliver a much higher share of housing.Over time, once the immediate need for more social housing is met, this sector can also provide rentals for people on moderate incomes as an alternative to the private rental market.
Community housing is part of the solution to shifting renting from an extractive investment done primarily for capital gains, to a community asset where tenants have a sense of belonging in the place they live
The government would underwrite Community Housing Projects, targeting this particularly towards communities with unmet needs eg Māori/Pasifika, elderly and disabled people., and that priorities long term rental tenure and community focus. This is expected to provide an additional 1,500 – 2,000 houses.
There is also provision in the package to increase support for Māori housing developed in culturally specific ways eg Papakāinga.
For those that see this a race-based funding and therefore unfair, consider that Māori are being supported to have housing according to their cultural values and needs, and that in doing so via partnership with the Crown they will provide additional models of how New Zealand can organise our communities generally. Many non-Māori will welcome these models and benefit from them. The solution to any perceived fairness issues is rather than blocking the initiatives, instead eventually offer such concepts and practices of communal ownership, intergenerational living, and connection to land, to the rest of the country as well.
Most of what we are seeing from the Greens now is building on and refining the policy work they have been doing for many years. These policies go beyond conventional notions of what housing solutions are, and they bring in creative and responsive ideas of not rentals as stock units but how homes and communities can be regenerated and regenerative. This is what happens when we put people at the centre of our solutions.
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