Revealing Article on Housing Scarcity

[Perry]

Housing scarce and homes scarcer

Sunday 19 Feb, 2017

[propertynewb]

I have a lot of family in Napier; my younger sister is a solo Mum with a four year old daughter currently living in a 60m2 2 bed unit for $300/week, agreement ending at the end of March. The property I recently bought there is a 100m2 3 bed on 700m2 section so she is going to move in and pay market for it, which will save her competing against a dozen similar families trying to get something.

I know someone who works for MSD and they have mentioned the need to put various beneficiaries up in motels. She also mentioned receiving meth decontamination bills from the motels after the clients had done whatever inside the room that caused a contamination to occur.

Tough situation for a lot of families there. I don't think there is any development happening and just prior to Christmas I was told the average sale time was 6 days.

[Nick G]

People somehow have failed to realise that a house moving from an investor over to a home still only houses one family.

[Davo36]

Well tough situation for some, but the meth users just bugger things up for everyone don't they?

Landlords much more cagey about who they let in these days.

[Perry]

Wasn't this telling reading?

She said they made a conscious decision to help people in need of emergency housing but are sometimes "horrified at what that entails. We try to keep people safe, but have had some really unfortunate situations. These are people that are very vulnerable, whether it is mentally, emotionally, financially and sometimes all of those things."

Her experience is that more than half displayed an entitlement to their accommodation. "That they can just rock in there, no questions asked and they can stay and wreck the place. They can refuse to pay rent, they can steal all the stuff we have provided in good faith because they have nothing. That is the reality."

"Some arrived intoxicated; many received several bail-check visits and some had mental-health issues.

Often they are from domestic violence situations and are hiding from people. They get found and all hell breaks loose. It is really, really difficult is to help this kind of scenario. We are trying to do help and we do have people here that are beneficiaries, but we will only take people case-by-case."

[Davo36]

Wasn't this telling reading?

Yeah man, you's have to be a very very good samaritan to want to do that.

Who would want to help people who turn around and wreck your place?

[Perry]

Then there was this:

A couple with a two-year-old daughter had all their possessions in one suitcase. "I went and bought them second-hand sheets and towels, but they took everything like that. They didn't take the appliances - they were bolted down.

[Perry]

Hamilton, too. Seems a Widespread Problem.

Premium motel rates 'danger money' for emergency housing risk
24 Feb 2017

She goes from one motel room to the next, a week at a time, and it's dragged on for four months. And there seems no end in sight for Natalie Reese, 44, and her teenage daughter, who are stuck in a roundabout of emergency accommodation. So far, Reese said, it's cost taxpayers $25,000. "We can't do anything. We can't function right because we don't have all of our stuff to start with. It's all in the car," Reese said.

[Davo36]

Premium motel rates 'danger money' for emergency housing risk
24 Feb 2017

What a terrible situation this country is in housing-wise. Why have we let ourselves get like this? Never used to be like this 30 years ago.

But I think it's actually wider than this, it's all about dysfunction as well. These people have terrible lives because they don't know how to live normally i.e. no violence, no drugs, limited alcohol.

[Perry]

Well, we've semi-covered it in another thread. Excessive immigration may make GDP look good for a while, but then the nemesis occurs. And I see that the founder of Dick Smiths (Dick himself) has chimed in on the crisis, too.

We'll be lucky if the matter is discussed reasonably and rationally, as a certain element in our society will rush out with cries of racism, hate speech, xenophobia, etc. All in an effort to stop any meaningful pondering of the problems such mass immigration causes: the housing crisis being uppermost in people's mind. (Whether or not the connection is made between the two items).

22 Feb 2017: Dick Smith blames 'jumbo loads' of immigrants for high Aussie house prices

12 Oct 2016: David Hargreaves says the Government needed to address the immigration issue

12 October 2016: This is what would happen if Australia halted immigration

23 March 2015: Immigration peak to fuel house prices

After all, it's not as if it's a new problem, is it?

[eri]

as being from an australian immigrant community himself

i wonder if he supports signing a meaningful treaty with australia's first peoples

anyone know?

[Perry]

Be Careful What You Wish For

i wonder if he supports signing a meaningful treaty with Australia's first peoples? anyone know?

Best everyone stays away from such notions. Especially given the NZ example, where the Waitangi Treaty is full of so many meanings which the signatories and writers never intended, nor even contemplated.

[eri]

just trying to gauge

the depth of his immigration concern

would be a shame

if it was just shallow and self-interested

[Davo36]

just trying to gauge

the depth of his immigration concern

would be a shame

if it was just shallow and self-interested

And that's what he was saying eri. You can't have this discussion without people saying your shallow and self interested.

[eri]

wonder why?