Sale of State Houses:
A couple of weeks ago I went to a presentation by Treasury officials briefing the Community Housing sector on the plans to sell 2500 State houses in Christchurch. Most people will not have paid any attention to this proposal which was announced towards the ned of last year. The proposal is to sell houses which are in blocks in Shirley, Bryndwyr and Riccarton.
Now I actually haven’t a problem with the sale of State Houses into local control. I think Housing New Zealand would be much healthier if it was managed and accountable to local direction and decision making. At present the local staff must be pushed and pulled in all directions as they desperately try to meet the latest whim of whoever is the current minister. Generally this whim will be about Auckland, where the votes are. Imagine if all of the Housing New Zealand stock was under a local board, driven for and by local interests.
I often think about my parents coming back from the Second World War. The State recognised that they had to provide stability for the new families which were requiring certainty and a sense of community after the instability of a depression and a war. The returning families were offered a 3% loan if they built a new home in an approved subdivision, or our Mums could capitalise their family benefits as a deposit for an existing house, or they could get a State House. This was a state commitment to supporting a stable community. Those of us who were born in this period benefitted from a society which acknowledged a state role in our upbringing. We have had much of this stability removed, thanks largely to the neo-liberal economics which has turned us from a community into an individualised society. We are back in a similar place requiring State leadership in housing beyond relying on the market to supply it.
The sale of these houses gives us an opportunity to rethink just what community means now. Imagine this sale as being a sub-set of what we have to consider if we are to recover a local challenge of this being an inclusive society. In my submission to Community Housing Aotearoa (which is the peak body for community housing in New Zealand) I said:
When I thought about what was presented to us yesterday I fear there is a very great social danger in this exercise. As Cate Kearney said so eloquently, at our first meeting to consider the supposed “stock” sale at the end of last year, this housing represents the dreams and commitment of our ancestors to house all families properly and decently. In my opinion this exercise can be justified if it is only about improving the stock and support to the tenants of these, their homes. Our sector can play an important role in this as local providers. This is not just an opportunity for investors and bankers. They will automatically be part of the mix. First and foremost are the rights and lives of the people who live in these houses. As that outstanding prophet, Darryl Kerrigan, said to the judge in “The Castle” that they weren’t talking about a house they were talking about a home. This exercise is about people’s homes. They are already vulnerable. That’s why they were given a State House. Although they were sent a letter saying that they would not be disadvantaged by Housing New Zealand they still have not been consulted on any of this process. Are they pawns in a big game of finance?
Our community is still vulnerable because of what we have all experienced down here. We will recover. However we will only recover if we work to support each other carefully and thoughtfully and reflect on issues in front of us from a long term perspective rather than a short term one.
When I consider the three areas being tendered carefully, I think Shirley offers the best long term development opportunity to achieve a genuinely inclusive community. The houses being “tendered” are old, as are most of the houses in that area. Over a reasonable period this whole area could be rejuvenated. The Bryndwr area would be very appealing to investors as they could use this area to shift Fendalton’s boundaries over a bit. The Riccarton houses will almost certainly gentrify the area; like the Bryndwr houses. We will then have been participating in an exercise which, over the next few decades, will move the families, currently protected by the State, and remove the poor from the area. Social engineering at its best. I hope this is not the purpose of this exercise. I’m sure it isn’t. However it could become one of its unintended consequences.
I hope we can rediscover what was the way this City used to think when we were labelled as “The Peoples Republic of Christchurch” and not break into traditional easily defined subsets. One way would be to oppose all of the process. Another could be to consider what would happen if we looked at this as an opportunity to manage all the State Houses in Christchurch locally. The Christchurch City Council has shown how it can be done. They have formed Otautahi Community Housing Trust and all of the Council rental stock is managed by this Trust. It’s a good model.
What is being offered by the State is they have set a figure for what all these houses are worth. This figure is $704m. This figure is non-negotiable. If a tender is received for less than this sum then the State will retain the balance of the funds as a second mortgage. What if the State, which holds these houses in Trust for future generations, agreed to hand the houses over in total for no financial consideration to local control? This trusteeship would then pass to our community where it would be considered alongside all of the other matters with housing which need to be considered by every town and city in New Zealand. The State would not be withdrawing from housing it would be transferring decision making and management to our local community, just as it has with many other decisions. Isn’t that where the world is heading? Isn’t the challenge in our world to get decisions made as close to those affected as is possible? As one of the attendees at the meeting with Treasury said to me on the way out of the room, “imagine if this led to all sorts of proper social assistance to our most vulnerable community members and the dividend to the State would be in the form of lower spending on Police, Justice and Welfare”. Then there would be a dividend for all parties.
Many of you will recall the sale of Energy companies in the early 1990’s. The supposed Bradford reforms. They were a community disaster. What previous generations had carefully established in the form of local energy companies were sold off and an “energy market” created. A mate who was involved in the retail sector at the time said some of their biggest sales of whiteware occurred when people received their pay-out from their local energy suppliers. Many generations built up the assets and one generation sold them. For a fridge, or a washing machine. I took one generation to squander the complete community investment made by previous generations. Then the power went up in price. Let us not have this happen with housing. If this exercise continues as planned the sale proceeds would go to Central Government and the issue of community housing would pass to whoever makes the best financial offer. There’s something offensive talking about the market for these houses, when it is about the homes of the members of our community who are our most vulnerable citizens.
