Zizi Sparks: Housing inquiry should give solutions as well as answers

Housing issues stretch from renters to homeowners and emergency housing clients. Photo / File

OPINION

Concerns as Western Bay pensioner rent soars 40 per cent. Rental shortage and price hikes hit Tauranga and Rotorua. No longer $10 Tauranga. Human Rights Commission launches national inquiry into housing crisis.

Those are just some of the housing-related headlines we've had plastered online in the space of just one week.

These headlines solidify what we already know: housing is the biggest issue facing the country right now.

And it isn't just house prices. The headlines show it is rents and pensioner housing too.

Then we're spending millions of dollars on emergency and transitional housing in motels.

It's bad across the board and it's bad enough the Human Rights Commissioner has stepped in and launched a national inquiry.

It has created the initial guidelines to clarify what the right to a decent home means in Aotearoa ahead of the inquiry later in the year.

Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt said successive governments had failed New Zealanders.

The purpose of the guidelines is to clarify what a decent home is while spelling that out to local and central government, individuals, iwi and communities.

But I hope it does more than just explain what a decent home is.

It's all very well to look into a problem, but we need more than inquiries if we want to make a difference.

I know the Government has not been sitting on its hands. It has made attempts to fix the housing situation by extending the bright-line test - tax paid for the sale of a residential property owned for less than 10 years, unless used as the owner's residence - and increasing house price caps under the First Home Grants scheme.

It has also made rental law changes limiting rental increases and ensuring all rentals are insulated.

In May, the Government announced it would directly contract motels in Rotorua for emergency accommodation as part of a $30 million shake-up of the controversial system.

But to date, housing issues have continued so more needs to be done.

A national inquiry is a good start and I welcome a look into what I believe is our country's biggest issue.

But I hope it provides solutions.