Tuesday 23 August 2016

John Key really doesn’t want affordable housing

 

The Affordable-Housing Theatre continues, with politicians feigning interest in the problem they’ve helped cause, while signalling to house-owning voters that, “no worries,” their house prices will be safely high with them.

Yet almost everybody who owns a home has relatives who can’t, and wishes they could. and surveys show that nearly two-thirds of Aucklanders and more than half of those who own a home would prefer that house prices either “fell a bit” or “fell dramatically” over the next year. And more than four in five understand we’re in a bubble.

And any economist who understands that prosperity doesn’t grow in a bubble knows that unaffordable housing costs us all in the end.

But does that bother the PM? Nah. Not a bit. Anybody who thinks house prices should fall is “crazy.”  And yesterday in the parliament he said Metiria Turei’s quite sensible observation that house prices too high represented “a war on the poor.”

Logic has gone totally out the window. It’s out there on the wind, along with the rising price of houses, and the promises to do something about it.

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6 comments:

Johno said...

This UMR poll suggesting 60% would like houses to drop unlikely - too many people in the poll (if representative) would seem to be wanting to have their biggest asset drop in value. Turkeys don't vote for early Christmas.

So I have tried to find the details of this poll - particularly to see how the selection is performed. "Online Omnibus" has a smell of "self selecting" about it.

But the details don't appear on the UMR site nor anywhere else. Until I see this I'm calling it BS.

UMR are Labour's pollster and Hickey has an axe to grind.

Richard Wiig said...

I'm just about over the idea that the politicians cause the problems. They don't. They get their power from those who support them, so it is those who support them who create the problems. The root problem is the ignorance of all the people who don't take their lives into their own hands, but continually vote for someone else to run it for them.

paul scott said...

Having a completely weak opposition is not helping. But this has been 25 years or more in the making, with out any loss of confidence still that we need to be planned for and zoned.
I am living in a city of over four million people, apartment complex 85sq meters, rent $NZ5500 a year, [120,000 baht] plus some extras. I think the capital value would be about $NZ140,000. Return 4%. Doesn't make sense to me. Its not the best area, and far from the worst. Security guards 24 hours, good swimming pool. Girl extra.
I also don't understand why a pollster would turn out trash figures, secret, and unknown, and still expect anyone to take it seriously.

Angry Tory said...

Who gives a shit if bludgers can't afford houses?


The real problem are the unionists, government employees and the rest who are able to buy houses only by stealing the fruits of the productive. Throw them all into the gutters where they belong - end all government schools, government hospitals, government welfare, government super - and the housing crisis goes away overnight.

The problem is not housing - it is, always, bludgers.

MarkT said...

I give a shit (and so should you) because if house prices weren't so artificially inflated by government regulation, there wouldn't be so many bludgers.

Richard Wiig said...

Yep. It isn't only bludgers who want to buy houses.