Editorial: Crisis hits poor in pocket

Mark Dawson

SO THERE is a real housing crisis after all.

For the past few years we have been regaled with stories about the Auckland housing crisis.

Politicians, commentators and the media have fallen over themselves to sound the alarm bells as house prices in Auckland have gone through the roof - and then some.

Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler has warned that the economy is under threat from rampant house prices and has tried various measures to stem the tide.

But out in the provinces, in places like affordable Whanganui, this talk of million-dollar homes becoming multimillion-dollar homes hasn't seemed too crisis-like.

But now we do seem to have a bit of a crisis on our hands - at the bottom end of the market, rather than the top end ... the problem is that a lot of it isn't even in the market at all.

Recent stories about families living in garages or tents, or in their cars point to the real issue, which is a lack of cheap housing for those who are scraping by.

The Chronicle has reported on prisoners released from Kaitoke struggling to find a home, to pay private rental rates, to get that solid, necessary base to keep them from going back behind bars.

Last week we reported on the Wanganui Housing Trust which has two properties for emergency housing. When they are full, the trust is faced with turning people in need away.

The trust turned to Housing New Zealand for help. Nothing doing. That is a similar response to the one Whanganui's Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society received.

Housing NZ does not think there is much demand for its homes in Whanganui and has been selling them off.

This week State Housing Action Network called on the Government to halt the sale of its housing stock.

"In the light of the housing crisis for low-income families ... it is unconscionable that the government would begin selling state houses," it said.

There is a Budget tomorrow and housing measures are likely to figure prominently. Most of the policy will be around Auckland, of course, but let's hope there is something for the rest of the country, where being homeless hurts just as much.