There is a lot written about housing. Mostly by people who already have at least one home. They argue about the cost of money. They argue about Local Government stopping development. They argue that the Resource Management Act is causing the end of the world. There are few who really look at housing as a system.
How often do we all receive adverts in our letter box from yet another grasping Real Estate agent trying to convince us that our house is worth way more than we think.
It’s all so abstract.
Then I read this article which started this way:
We went to some open homes over the weekend. I put on a sundress. Yellow flowers. My husband wore a shirt. Idiotic really but somehow, I’d hoped to convey a sense of being a nice couple who just wanted a home; not land, not an investment, not an asset, but a home. It didn’t matter because there is no one to impress, no one to care. Not the bank, not the real estate agents, not the vendors, not the government. No one to care about who you are or what your aspirations might be. There is no one to care because there is only the market.
Later in the article the author wrote:
The thing is, I’ve given up hope that the Government can or will do much about this. Both of our major political parties are now holding the shards of last century’s big broken promises in their hands. Both parties are culpable. This is not a problem that arose a year ago and both the Key and the Clark governments helped stoked the bonfire upon which the current Government is both tipping fuel and occasionally trying to dampen down.
Labour, the words of Norman Kirk about the four basic needs are fading into the background, drowned out by the roar of the market. The party of the working class is now presiding over one of the biggest transfers of wealth and security away from the class they purported to protect. Your labour belongs to your landlord. There is no safety net, the social contract is void. It is time to pop a shroud over the portraits of Mickey Savage.
The issue is what will we do, those of us who were given so much when we were the age of the author of this article?
Here is the article. Make a cup of tea and read it. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/anna-rawhiti-connell-angry-nausea-over-broken-housing-promises
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