A Papua New Guinean anthropologist has warned that a campaign by authorities to remove communities from informal settlements in Port Moresby will not solve growing social problems in PNG’s capital.

The government is determined to end the role of settlements as what Prime Minister James Marape describes as “breeding grounds for terror” as part of its law and order reforms, but recent evictions have run into problems.

Almost half of Port Moresby’s estimated population of around 500,000 live in settlements, often without legal title or access to basic services. Some of the settlements have become notorious as crime hotspots.

• READ MORE: PNG govt defends using tear gas, force to evict illegal settlers in capital
• Other PNG settlements reports

However, in late January, police moved into the settlement at 2-Mile, sparking clashes with residents that resulted in two deaths and numerous injuries.

Police then moved to evict another settlement at 4-Mile, but this met with a legal challenge which led to the National Court placing a stay order on the eviction.

While the campaign is essentially paused, Marape has said his government would soon announce a permanent plan to replace unplanned settlements with properly titled residential allotments.

He also apologised to residents affected by the evictions, in recognition that many law-abiding and hard working families have made settlements their home over the years.

Urban drift
Previous attempts at evicting settlement communities did not exactly lay a template for the success of what authorities are trying to do in 2026.

In numerous cases, homes were destroyed or razed to the ground, people were left homeless and then simply moved to other areas of vacant land or ended up living with wantoks in other parts of Morebsy.

A PNG anthropologist who has done extensive work on settlements, Dr Fiona Hukula, noted that settlements are long-established communities, stretching back decades.

“Essentially, people came to work in the towns and the cities, like in Port Moresby, and so where there was low cost housing, or where people weren’t able to afford housing, they started living in settlements, and some of the settlements on the outskirts, there’s stories that they made some kind of connection and deals with the local landowners.”

Dr Hukula said over the decades, migration to the towns and cities had grown significantly, but the available housing had not kept pace.

“People are just now coming into the city, really, to access better services, health and education. Some Papua New Guineans are coming to the city to escape various forms of conflict and violence.

“And this is now where we’ve seen just an influx of people coming into the city, and obviously there’s nowhere to live, and they live in settlements, and many of Moresby settlements are populated by families who have been there for several generations.”

‘Difficult thing I have to do’
Many of Moresby’s settlements are now populated by families who have been there for several generations. Removing people from these communities is a complex challenge.

“An eviction is not going to solve the problem, because people will just go and find somewhere else to stay (in Moresby), especially if they’re generational families who have lived in these settlements, who don’t necessarily have the ties back to their rural villages and their connections to their people in their village,” Dr Hukula said.

Adding to the complexities of the eviction drive are social connections forged in the National Capital District (NCD) over the years.

The head of the NCD Police Command Metropolitan Superintendent Warrick Simitab admitted that for him personally, leading the eviction exercises such as at 2-Mile had not been easy.

“It’s been difficult, because I grew up here. I grew up in NCD. For example in 2-Mile. Most of my classmates that I went to school together with, they live there. So for me personally, it’s a difficult thing that I have to do,” he told RNZ Pacific.

Simitab would not be drawn on when the evictions would start up again, saying things were paused while political leaders decide next steps.

Criminal hotspot
The local MP for Moresby South Justin Tkatchenko said the 2-Mile settlement had become a notorious criminal hotspot, and that the people of the city had had enough of it.

“Hold ups nearly every night and every day, women have been raped, attacked, citizens have been held up, cars stolen, injured, abused for nearly 20 years,” he said.

Things came to a head when police were shot at and those living in 2-Mile refused an ultimatum given by police to hand over the criminals, he explained.

Tkatchenko said the government was steadily working on resettling settlers with proper, legal allocations of land to live on.

“We have already allocated land and sub-divided that land for over 400 families in the 2-Mile Hill area and other areas. Some have already been resettled and moved, and others will follow suit,” the MP said.

Dr Hukula acknowledged that crime linked to some settlements was an issue that the general population keenly wanted addressed.

But she said persisting with displacing communities from other settlements would not address the underlying cause of the problem.

‘Ticking time bomb’
“It is a ticking time bomb. It’s going to be like this, where there’s evictions and then people move. And the thing is that the cycle of violence continues, and that’s what we’re trying to address here, the crime.”

The anthropologist stressed that “not everybody in settlements are criminals”, saying the people who lived in settlements were often working people, “people who are doing the menial jobs in the offices, the office cleaners, the people who are drivers, all of these kinds of people also live in settlements.

“And so when they’re being kicked out, there are people who can’t go to work, children who can’t go to school”.

Dr Hukula has researched and written about how settlement communities have developed informal systems of settling disputes or addressing law and order problems such as through local komiti groups or village courts.

These provided a way in which the communities could maintain order and general respect between their people. But “because the settlements have just exploded now it’s not like necessarily everybody comes from the same area or the same province” she said, making it harder to maintain a social balance.

In Dr Hukula’s view, “the village courts and the community leaders still play an extremely important role in being that bridge” between the authorities and the settlement community, and should be supported to play that role.

She said one of the other main things the government could do to help the situation was “to make sure that there’s affordable housing for all levels, all kinds of Papua New Guineans”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

In 1988, our National Housing Commission declared, “New Zealand does not have the huge, insoluble problems of homelessness and substandard housing which confront many other nations.”

This was the final report of the then disestablished commission, which to that point had reported detailed data every five years to keep the country and policy-makers informed about what we had once considered the foundation of stable society — a home for New Zealanders to call their own.

I was born six years after that report, and in those years and across my lifetime, deliberate political choices — specifically, political choices by people sitting in Parliament — have shredded that once-guaranteed housing dignity and stability.

• READ MORE: Greens’ rental price control policy: Davidson rubbishes criticisms
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They traded it for a game of Monopoly, which, the pecuniary interests register tells us, also happens to disproportionately benefit around half of the “representatives” in there with interests in more than one property (notably, approximately just 2 percent of the general population are landlords).

This dire situation is the direct consequence of political decisions, and it is disproportionately hurting the 1.4 million renters in this country that our Parliament, by majority, and as an overwhelming majority of comfortable homeowners, continues to structurally disempower.

In spite of this, we have made some slow progress. In 2017, the Greens worked with Labour to introduce Healthy Homes Standards and a slate of amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, removing no-cause evictions and allowing renters to take claims to the Tenancy Tribunal anonymously.

Some standards, we obviously agreed, were better than nothing. A set of rules means it’s clear how a game should be played, but those rules become pretty meaningless if there’s no consistent referee monitoring and enforcing them.

Compliance not tracked
Unfortunately, that’s what the Healthy Homes Standards have become. My parliamentary written questions last year showed the government isn’t tracking how many private rentals are compliant.

It doesn’t know how many landlords and property managers have decided to self-exclude their properties from compliance. It has no tabs on the cottage industry of companies that have cropped up to verify these standards, let alone the variance in their approaches.

This leaves the third of New Zealanders who rent left to shoulder the burden of enforcing these basic rules which are supposed to protect them.

It’s a funny thing that whenever the Greens mention renters, we’re immediately shouted down and told that the problem is, somehow, that landlords aren’t given enough free rein. That the solution is more commodification of basic human rights.

Ironically, this is exactly what the National Housing Commission warned against back in 1988, that shifting of responsibility from the state to the private sector would, “add little to the total housing supply while allowing private landlords and property speculators to make even higher charges for a non-expanding supply of housing… rais[ing] the purchase price of land and rented property”.

We now know, viscerally, how right they were. Whatever metric you choose, we have the most expensive housing in the world.

The Accommodation Supplement, once rationalised in the state-housing sell-off to help support lower income New Zealanders pushed into the private sector, is now paid out to the tune of $2 billion a year with evidence showing it primarily serves to just bid up rental prices and effectively subsidise private landlords.

Special tax preferential
We remain one of the only countries in the developed world that continues to provide special tax treatment and preference to properties, incentivising the flow of capital into unproductive property speculation, or what University of Auckland researchers called, “a politically condoned, finance-fuelled casino”.

In less than 40 years, political decisions have not only made housing one of the major drivers of poverty and inequality in this country, but one of the major determinants of both physical and mental health, not to mention education achievement and school attendance.

So, who pays the cost?

Most immediately, it’s the 1.4 million renting New Zealanders, who Statistics New Zealand tells us spend more of their income on older, smaller, mouldier, lower quality housing.

Renting is no longer a transient state — unless you’re talking about the literal transience which sees renters in this country maintaining their tenancies for, on average, just 16 months at a time.

Almost all of us will know families with children and friends in their 30s and 40s who are flatting. A quarter of retirees don’t own their own home.

This didn’t happen overnight. It happened within a generation of political decisions that sold our human right to housing to the highest bidder.

As depressing as that may be, it makes clear that the status quo is not an inevitability. It can and must change if we want any hope of a fairer society.

The good news is the Greens have unveiled our plan to fix it all.

Chlöe Swarbrick is the Green Party MP for Auckland Central. This article was originally published in The New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Nearly 40 percent of Pacific people in Aotearoa New Zealand live in crowded homes — almost four times that of the general population, according to a new report.

The report by Statistics New Zealand was based on data from the 2018 Census, which showed 39 percent lived in a home that required additional bedrooms for the number of people living in it, which shows no progress has been made since 2013.

The data showed nearly 60 percent of households with Pacific people had more than five residents. But with more than 65 percent of Pacific people living in rented homes, just 4 percent of rented homes had five or more bedrooms.

An organisation supporting Pacific families said, while intergenerational living and big households are not new to the Pacific community, there was an urgent need to support people suffering from the negative impacts of overcrowded living.

The Fono’s spokesperson Frank Koloi said during the pandemic, large Pacific families were already straining from the pressures of looking after visiting relatives stranded in the lockdowns.

He said the unaffordability of homes and the rising cost of living is another blow to intergenerational households struggling to get by.

Koloi said there were a range of other issues typically seen in crowded homes.

‘Truancy in schools’
“From truancy in schools, family violence … the current outbreak of measles and rheumatic fever is still prominent within Pacific families in south Auckland,” he said.

“So there’s a real need to address the overcrowded homes in terms of resourcing these families.”

Koloi said the Fono was supporting these families with wrap-around services, including budgeting advice, supporting kids going back to school and helping people into higher paying jobs through upskilling.

Stats NZ’s wellbeing and housing statistics manager Sarah Drake said the current growing Pacific population was often unsupported, particularly in large urban areas like Auckland — where even unsuitable housing can be unaffordable to rent or own.

The data also showed more than half of people living in crowded homes had a problem with damp, cold, mould, or needed major repairs.

Stats NZ’s principal analyst of census insights, Rosemary Goodyear, said they would like to see more people from the Pacific community do the Census this year so that their circumstances and voices could be heard.

In 2018, just 35 percent of Pacific peoples lived in owner-occupied homes, compared with 64 percent of the total population.

The homelessness rate for Pacific peoples was 578 people per 10,000 — more than double that of the general population.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

A new $100 million apartment complex is coming to Manukau — Auckland’s heart of Pacific communities.

But you’ll have to be aged at least 55 to get in.

Kāinga Ora is expected to start construction of the 123 apartments in Osterley Way in March. The 16-storey tower will include 94 one-bedroom and 29 two-bedroom apartments.

• READ MORE: Other NZ housing crisis reports

The government said it was necessary to target targeting specific age groups to match an increasing demand from “older customers”.

“Kāinga Ora recognises our older customers have specific housing needs, which we are addressing through senior housing developments such as the proposed project in Manukau,” regional director for Counties Manukau Angela Pearce said.

Pearce said one in five of the agency’s homes in Counties-Manukau had someone over 65 living in it, while 670 of its homes in the area were occupied by sole tenants in the same age group.

“With an aging population, Kāinga Ora recognises the importance of dedicated senior housing where our older tenants can live well, feel safe and secure, both in their homes and the community.”

Two years on state house list
Maureen O’Meara, 75, spent two years on the state house waiting list and was renting a two-bedroom unit in Pakuranga for $420 a week until earlier this year.

“I had $17 left a week after paying the rent,” O’Meara said. “Being on a pension and paying market rent meant I didn’t have a lot of money left to live on.”

O’Meara managed to find somewhere more affordable in May after she was put in touch with Haumaru Housing, a joint venture between Auckland Council and the Selwyn Foundation.

But O’Meara said the Manukau development reflects an increasing number of people reaching retirement without a home.

“And I think there’s going to be a need for more places like it,” she said.

Age Concern Auckland chief executive Kevin Lamb said it’s important the development was close to public transport and community facilities.

“We think it’s high time older people had accommodation that is new and more appropriate for their needs.”

Big part of pension on housing
Recently-released research by Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission showed superannuitants still paying rent were more likely to be spending 40 percent or more of their pension on housing.

While long-term trends suggest more older New Zealanders are likely to still be renting in their retirement.

Te Ara Ahunga Ora director of policy Dr Suzy Morrissey said with declining home ownership rates there was a growing need for public housing and accommodation for those aged 55 and over.

“When NZ Super was introduced, it was with the underlying assumption that those accessing it would be mortgage-free homeowners,” she said.

“Today, the reality is very different. There are declining home ownership rates, more people needing to continue working longer because they still have mortgages to pay, are paying rent, or haven’t been able to save enough to retire.”

• Auckland is currently in the middle of the local body elections with a Pacific candidate, Fa’anānā Efeso Collins, one of the two top contenders for mayor of the super city.

Deception and political spin crossed new boundaries this week with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, under pressure to explain the housing catastrophe in Rotorua, making the absurd statement:

“Our long-term plan is to get them into sustainable, long-term safe housing. It’s why for instance we’ve worked so hard to now have built 10 percent of all the state houses in New Zealand.”

Meaningless, ludicrous and irrelevant.

• READ MORE: Christopher Luxon denies National government’s actions caused state housing supply issue
• TVNZ’s Sunday showed devastating scenes from Rotorua and the enduring power of TV

Why was she not challenged by journalists on this preposterous statement?

The government has been demolishing state houses almost as fast as it builds them so that the net increase in state houses over the last five years stands at a piddling 1100 per year for a waiting list of 26,664. The waiting list has increased five-fold since Labour came to power in 2017.

Labour is taking us backwards on state housing at a spectacular rate.

And neither is it the fault of the previous National government. Labour has kept the policy settings for state house building the same as applied under National — right down to maintaining the same tough criteria to enable a low-income tenant or family to get on the waiting list.

Largest Labour privatisation since 1980s
The awful reason Labour is demolishing state houses and selling the land is to provide funding for Kainga Ora. The government doesn’t want to borrow to build, which any sensible government would, so it is forcing Kainga Ora to sell land and properties to do this.

It’s the largest privatisation of state assets by Labour since the 1980s.

Where are the journalists to put some simple questions to the Prime Minister?

• Why has Labour allowed the state house waiting list to INCREASE FIVE FOLD (from 5,000 in late 2017 to over 26,000 in 2022) with no effective policy response?
• Why does Labour still think it’s OK to produce just 1,100 net new state houses per year for a state house waiting list of over 26,000? (When Labour came to power there were 63,209 state houses which has increased to just 68,765 by June this year).
• Why are the number of children living in grotty motels STILL INCREASING?
• Why is the number of children living in cars STILL INCREASING?
• Why are the number of children in tents STILL INCREASING?
• Why is Labour still ONLY FUNDING 1600 new IRRS places (for state house and social housing providers combined) each year for the more than 26,000 families on the state house waiting list?
• Why does Labour still think it’s OK to keep the proportion of state house at just 3.6% of total housing stock when it was 5.4 percent in 1990?
• Why has Labour not instigated an industrial-scale state house building programme such as the first Labour government did in the 1930s? (Labour then built 3500 state houses each year – equivalent to 10,000 today on a population basis).
• Why is the government planning to sell 55 to 60 percent of crown land in Auckland to private property developers when we have a housing catastrophe for low-income New Zealanders?

Where are the journalists to expose this prime ministerial spin?

Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

A large number of New Zealanders are facing a perfect storm at retirement, with minimal savings and no house, raising the risk that thousands will enter old age in poverty.

According to the latest retirement expenditure guidelines from Massey University, a two-person retiree household living an urban “choices” lifestyle, which includes some luxuries, would need to have saved NZ$809,000.

In the provinces, a couple would need to have saved $511,000.

• READ MORE: How New Zealanders miss out on hundreds of thousands in retirement savings
• Fall in ageing Australians’ home-ownership rates looms as seismic shock for housing policy
• The edges of home ownership are becoming porous. It’s no longer a one-way street
• NZ’s fossil fuel investment ban for popular KiwiSaver funds is more political than ethical

New Zealanders have traditionally relied on owning a home to support themselves during their retirement years. But many of the New Zealanders now aged between 50 and 65 – a cohort of almost half a million people – will go into retirement as renters after skyrocketing house prices over the last three decades put home ownership out of reach.

At the same time, this generation were already working adults when the Labour government introduced KiwiSaver in 2007, and are less likely to have a significant savings cushion.

Last year, Treasury raised concerns that this mixed group of baby boomers and generation X will not be able to financially manage retirement on their own.

Declining home ownership
Home ownership in New Zealand has fallen to the lowest rate in 70 years, with just 65 percent of people living in houses they own, down from the peak of 74 percent in the 1990s.

According to the 2018 Census, around one in four people between 50 and 65 don’t own the home they live in.

Research by Kay Saville-Smith from the Centre for Research Evaluation and Social Assessment suggests that by 2053 almost half of over-65s would be renting. That would mean 640,000 over-65s renting, including 326,000 renters aged over 85.

This issue of declining home ownership disproportionately affects those who have remained on low incomes throughout their working life. This, in turn, has stark consequences for Māori and Pacific people in New Zealand.

Between 1986 and 2013 the proportion of Māori and Pacific peoples living in owner occupied housing fell at a faster rate than the overall population (down 20 percent and 34.8 percent, respectively).

Skyrocketing rents
Also, in the last five years nationwide rents have risen 28 percent across all property types and regions.

For increasing numbers of people, housing — whether through ownership or renting — has become unaffordable.

The rapidly increasing rental costs have also reduced the ability of people to save for their own home.

KiwiSaver came too late

In 2007, the Labour-led government set up KiwiSaver as a voluntary savings scheme to help New Zealanders save for their retirement and to lift New Zealand’s low national savings rate.

But New Zealanders aged 50 to 64 were already adults and mid-career when KiwiSaver was launched. In our low-wage economy, they are likely to have contributed only 3 percent of wages, in addition to the employer’s 3 percent.

While some will have used their KiwiSaver account plus the government subsidy to put a deposit on a home purchase, few will have saved a significant nest egg for retirement. The 2021 Financial Markets Authority KiwiSaver Report showed average balances of only $26,410.

Squeaking by on superannuation
There is some support for retirees. When a person reaches the qualifying age of 65 years, they receive New Zealand Superannuation, currently $437 per week after tax for a single person.

But superannuation is predicated on owning your home rather than renting. Home ownership means effectively living rent free, with only rates and maintenance as regular necessary expenses in addition to food, power and phone.

Those people renting are currently confronted by a median weekly rental for a small house or apartment of $390 per week. While they may also be able to access the accommodation supplement and temporary additional support to assist with costs, a new threat has emerged in the form of inflation.

Consumer price index inflation peaked at close to 6.35 percent in early 2022, its highest level in three decades.

As well as steady increases in the price of electricity, petrol prices increased by 10 percent over the past year, and annual food prices rose 6.85 percent in February year-on-year. Fruit and vegetables are the largest contributors to the price rise. Car use can be contained with less recreational outings, but electricity, fruit and vegetables are needed for health.

None of this is going unnoticed. Treasury has raised the alarm about the increase of old age poverty. Many in the 50-65 age group share those concerns, and are approaching retirement with rational trepidation.

Dr Claire Dale is a research fellow, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

While I am always happy to celebrate any accolades my country and city might garner on the international stage, seeing Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau awarded the top ranking in a recent “most liveable cities” survey left me somewhat flummoxed.

In particular, I would argue that many Māori whānau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed “liveability”.

This is important, given Māori comprised 11.5 percent of the Auckland population in the 2018 Census. Roughly one in four Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand are living in the greater Auckland region.

• READ MORE: Recession hits Māori and Pasifika harder. They must be part of planning New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery
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• If New Zealand can radically reform its health system, why not do the same for welfare?

The survey was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister company of The Economist, and looked at 140 world cities. Auckland was ranked 12th in 2019, but took top spot this year for one obvious reason:

Auckland, in New Zealand, is at the top of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Liveability rankings, owing to the city’s ability to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic faster and thus lift restrictions earlier, unlike others around the world.

Most cities in Europe plunged in the rankings this year as the EIU’s liveability index incorporated new indicators related to covid-19 https://t.co/8555hY1f2U

— The Economist Data Team (@ECONdailycharts) June 9, 2021

Alternative liveability criteria
Each city in the survey was rated on “relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure”.

Overall rankings depended on how those factors were rated on a sliding scale: acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, intolerable. Quantitative measurements relied on “external data points”, but the qualitative ratings were “based on the judgment of our team of expert analysts and in-city contributors”.

The methodology, particularly around culture and environment, seems somewhat subjective. It’s predicated on the judgement of unnamed experts and contributors, and based on similarly undefined “cultural indicators”.

To better understand the living conditions of Māori in Auckland, therefore, we might use more robust “liveability” criteria. The New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework offers a useful model.

This sets out 12 domains of well-being: civic engagement and governance, cultural identity, environment, health, housing, income and consumption, jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, time use, safety and security, social connections and subjective well-being.

The Māori experience
Applying a small handful of these measures to Māori, we find the following.

Housing: According to recent reports, Auckland house prices increased by about NZ$140,00 on average in the past year. That contributed to Auckland being the fourth-least-affordable housing market, across New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Hong Kong.

Next to that sobering fact, we can point to estimates that Māori made up more than 40 percent of the homeless in Auckland in 2019. We can only assume this rapid increase in house prices has made homelessness worse.

Poverty: Alongside housing affordability is the growing concern about poverty in New Zealand, and particularly child poverty. While there has been an overall decline in child poverty, Māori and Pacific poverty rates remain “profoundly disturbing”.

Employment: As of March 2021, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recorded a Māori unemployment rate of 10.8 percent, well above the national rate (4.9 percent). This is particularly high for Māori youth (20.4 percent) and women (12.0 percent).

Health: Māori life expectancy is considerably lower than for non-Māori, and mortality rates are higher for Māori than non-Māori across nearly all age groups. Māori are also over-represented across a wide range of chronic and infectious diseases, injuries and suicide.

The digital divide: The Digital Government initiative has found Māori and Pasifika are among those less likely to have internet access, thus creating a level of digital poverty that may affect jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, safety and security, and social connections.

Making Auckland liveable for all
Taken together, these factors show a different and darker picture for far too many Māori than “liveable city” headlines might suggest.

I say this as someone who has lived in Auckland for the majority of the past 60 years. It is a city I love, and I acknowledge the grace and generosity of the mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau, with whom I share this beautiful whenua and moana.

I am also part of a privileged group of Māori who enjoy job security, a decent income, a secure whānau and strong social networks.

But, until we address and ameliorate the inequities and disadvantages some of our whānau face, we cannot truly celebrate being the “most liveable city in the world”.

Dr Ella Henry is an associate professor at Auckland University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

You can’t get the right answer if you keep asking the wrong question.

A question this neoliberal New Zealand government and previous ones continue to ask is:
“How can people get to own a home?”

There are very, very limited answers to that question.

• READ MORE: NZ’s first home buyers hoped for more from new housing policy
• Government announces plan to help first home buyers

But if you ask: “How can we give people security of tenure in a healthy, warm, dry, afforable home?” then lots of alterative answers emerge.

Such as long term leasing.

This would mean not relying on Mum and Dad private investors to house our people but creating large government funding mechanisms, eg. by insisting that the Superannuation Fund invest a set percentage of their profits in long term housing investments and reinstating the State Advances Corporation.

In short the government has to regain control of the mortgage market it abdicated to the privately owned banks in thhe early 1980s

This approach has worked in Berlin for example where citizens get lifelong leases on their apartments at government controlled and affordable rents (and, yes, people can decorate their homes as they wish as long as they don’t make structural alterations.)

You can find out about other solutions to our housing problems by watching my documentary Who Owns New Zealand Now? which I made almost 5 years ago now. (Especially the last couple of parts which deal with solutions).

Asia Pacific Report republishes occasional commentaries by journalist and documentary maker Bryan Bruce with permission.

For the majority of Papua New Guineans living in the capital of Port Moresby, providing a home for their families is only a dream as housing has become a luxury that only the rich can afford.

Many families are forced to rent out single rooms for between K500 (NZ$200) to K800 (NZ$315) with common shared facilities like bathrooms, toilets and kitchens. Others move to the many settlements scattered around the city where houses can be rented for up to K1500 (NZ$600) fortnightly.

But it wasn’t always like this.

• READ MORE: Scott Waide’s My Land, My Country blog

I was born and raised in Port Moresby and back in the 1990s when I was young, we used to live at Henao Drive in Gordons in a two bedroom, two storey house with a bathroom upstairs, a large dining room and living room downstairs.

The backyard was huge. We had a small duck pond and a BBQ place with a basketball court in the back. How did much my father pay fortnightly? Less than K300 ($NZ$118).

Houses, at that time, were being sold for between K10,000 (NZ$4000) and K20,000 (NZ$8000) at the new Rainbow suburb in Port Moresby’s North-East electorate.

Fast forward to the year 2000 and boom! The housing and rental rates in the city hit the roof….No. It went straight for the heavens.

We can only dream
I mean seriously … back in the 1990s we had homes. Today, we can only dream of one day providing a home for our children. It’s a sad reality for thousands in the city where most families can only afford to rent a room.

While many have cried for housing and rental rates to be regulated, the National Capital District Commission (NCDC) and the National Housing Corporation still do not have the powers to do so. Unless laws are passed on the floor of Parliament giving them the powers to do so.

Nothing has been done to address the issue. It makes one wonder if it is it because the people in authority who have the power to make decisions are also property owners. Property owners who make thousands out of the ridiculously high rental rates?

Houses on the rental market are priced at K1200 (NZ$470) to K3000 ($1180) weekly not fortnightly … WEEKLY! Looking at these prices you know right away that the majority of Papua New Guineans who are middle to low income earners won’t be able to afford this.

So, who do these real estate companies and property owners have in mind when they place ads for these prices? Expatriates? CEOs, managers and MPs?

What about the people, the people of this country?

Even the BSP First Home Ownership Scheme did not work out.

A scheme for the wealthy
How can a low to middle income earner afford the 10 percent needed to get that loan to purchase a home?

Again, it was almost as if the scheme was done to benefit only the wealthy.

Property developers have built many houses over the years to complement the First Home Ownership Scheme. But with houses going for K350,000 (NZ$137,000) to K500,000 (NZ$196,000) and the bank requiring a 10 percent down payment…. where are the people supposed to get the K35,000 to K50,000?

It’s high time the issue is addressed. The current government promised to “take back PNG” and they must do that by ensuring that their people’s welfare is taken care of. The housing issue must be addressed.

Laws and policies on real estate and housing must be reviewed, amended, changed to favor of the people.

There are so many aspects to the issue and many studies has been done by various organisations including the National Research Institute, over the years. Yet none of the recommendations have ever been implemented.

So, as the rich continue to live in their glass castles the people continue to suffer – living out of rooms, trying to earn a living and supporting their families.

Rebecca Kuku is an occasional contributor to Asia Pacific Report, a content contributor to The Guardian (Australia) and to the PNG Post-Courier. This article was first published on Scott Waide’s My Land, My Country blog and is republished with permission.

Dear Prime Minister Marape

Our government has to admit the fact that there is a glaring imbalance between Papua New Guinean and foreign ownership of businesses. We own very little in our country.

The retail, wholesale and real estate in our towns and cities are controlled by Chinese interests. We own almost nothing in the logging industry. It is, as we all know, controlled by Malaysian interests.

There is an increasing push by (new) Chinese business owners who are buying up National Housing Corporation (NHC) properties and forcing out Papua New Guineans – YOUR people – onto the streets.

• READ MORE: My Land, My Country

There is no strong legislation that prevents 100 percent foreign ownership of property and land. We need those laws in place now. We need the political will to do it. Now.

The justice system can’t protect our people. They don’t have the money to fight long protracted legal battles… …and the syndicate – yes, syndicates – know this and they take advantage of it.

Recently, local people along the North Coast of Madang protested against a sand mining proposal. The people associated with the sand mining company have also evicted families from NHC properties in Madang.

It is no secret. It was reported by the media.

Tack Back PNG more than a slogan
Take Back PNG must not remain a political slogan for elections. The people must live it.

I am calling for legislation that protects the social and economic rights of our people. I want lower taxes (or no taxes at all) for struggling SMEs.

Give them tax holidays like the government did for RD Tuna and the petroleum sector. Give them REAL financing. Not a figure on paper they can’t access.

We want shop spaces in the centre of our towns and cities. Give it to us. This is our country. We want what is ours.

If the laws don’t allow it. Change the laws to suit our people’s needs.

We cannot continue to exist on the fringes of a large Pacific economy that boasts a “healthy” GDP yet cannot show it in the impact on the lives of our people.

Tax the alcohol companies. They contribute to the widespread abuse and the violence associated with it.

Society not mature enough
Our society is not mature enough to allow the widespread consumption of alcohol.

Tax the cigarette companies. Make them all pay for the ill health of our people.

We are not taking back PNG by allowing these cancers to continue untreated. We are in fact, selling off PNG’s future.

Reduce the cost of medical treatment at the private clinics and hospitals. Reduce the cost of dental care. It’s UNAFFORDABLE. How can a papa or mama in the village afford K500 for a tooth extraction.

Give your people the means to look after themselves. Give your people the means to pay for their children’s education so they don’t become enslaved by politicians who peddle election policies that don’t really serve our people.

We don’t want to be dependent on government. We want to make our own money. Wealth in the hand of its people is real wealth.

We demand preferential treatment for US.

Our resources. Our country. We deserve more.

Scott Waide is a leading Papua New Guinean journalist and a senior editor with a national television network. He writes a personal blog, My Land, My Country. Asia Pacific Report republishes his articles with permission.

Million-dollar houses are now being sold in one of Auckland’s lowest-income suburbs and a local politician says New Zealand government failure is allowing the market to drive further inequality and hopelessness.

Last month an unremarkable 1960s weatherboard house on less than a quarter acre section in Ōtara in South Auckland sold for $1.01 million.

Another – which 12 years ago sold for $340,000 – went for $1.1m, more than triple its last sale price in October.

• READ MORE: ANZ calls housing unaffordability an “enormous problem” in NZ

Manukau ward councillor Fa’anānā Efeso Collins said more than 80 percent of Pacific people did not own their own homes, and rising house prices were a cause of pain for his constituents, as rents went up and incomes did not.

“That means there are times where some people have to go without,” Collins said.

“I know there are parents who are decreasing the number of meals they’re having to ensure that the kids are eating enough, and getting three basic meals a day. That’s part of what I call the social trauma that’s being faced by many constituents that I work with.”

He said people felt hopelessness about the situation, which they did not think would get any better.

People ‘have given up’
“I think people have given up. There are many people in the Manukau ward… that have just given up,” he said.

“I’m really disappointed with what the government’s done. I think the government’s thrown money at a banking system that in my view isn’t working, and that’s not going to keep house prices down.”

The new highs in the local housing market served as a reminder to people in a low-income Auckland suburb that housing costs were eating up their paychecks.

“There are parents in Ōtara that I know of that are going without just to keep their babies fed,” one woman in Ōtara’s town centre, who did not want to be named, said.

“Sometimes you hear of parents that don’t eat because their babies need to eat.”

Born and raised in Ōtara – and still living there – she thought the high cost of living was feeding crime.

“It contributes to the poverty in Ōtara. How expensive the houses are is contributing to why there’s such a high crime rate,” she said.

Window washing
“There are heaps of children out here that are window washing because there parents can only just afford the rent. It’s not their fault – they are doing crime, but if they’re doing it to put bread and milk on the table, who can blame them?”

Another woman, a shop owner, said she was a Labour voter but housing was the government’s biggest failure.

“I’ve been living here for 35 years. I would like to buy my own house but I can’t afford to. It’s ridiculous, and now I’m over 60 [years old].”

She had been in paid work her entire adult life, and was only ever just keeping her head above water, she said.

“They’re too greedy, landlords. Every year she’s putting up our rent.

“For nearly six months I [haven’t] cut my hair. I have no money… $35 for a haircut, I can’t afford to pay. House prices must come down in New Zealand.”

One man in Ōtara said Auckland was a city of the haves and the have-nots. Another, without a house at all, said homelessness had broken him.

Economists and banks are not expecting house price rises to plateau any time soon.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A housing trust chief executive has condemned the government for taking “short cuts” to tackle New Zealand’s housing crisis.

“We need to stop pulling rabbits out of hats and looking for quick fixes,” said Bernie Smith, CEO of Monte Cecilia Housing Trust.

Speaking at the annual Bruce Jesson Foundation lecture in Auckland on the topic “housing crisis – a smoking gun with no silver bullet”, he soundly criticised the government for not doing enough to provide affordable housing.

“A bit dramatic but I am known to be dramatic from time to time.”

READ MORE: Tūhoe leader’s address to deliver ‘hard truths’ about New Zealand

He said that there were no short-cuts to building affordable housing.

Smith has 40 years of experience in various forms of leadership in state and local government and not-for-profit sector.

The lecture has been delivered in previous years by prominent figures such as investigative journalist Nicky Hager and a former prime minister, David Lange, in honour of the late journalist and political thinker Bruce Jesson.

Work together
To resolve the housing crisis, Smith said the government and bureaucrats needed to work together and have a generational housing strategy that “builds strong housing communities for the present and the future generations”.

The coalition has been in government for 11 months and it has been “claiming all the issues that we are confronted with today are solely due to previous government”, he said.

“We need to stop the blame game, we need to stop thinking central or local government will resolve this issue, that housing first or some other programme is a quick fix,” he said.

Barry Wilson, president of Auckland Council for Civil Liberties, said that the political parties should be working together to “house the homeless in a comfortable secure condition”.

“There should be some unified political approach, it’s not productive every time they change the government,” Wilson said.

Long term strategy
New Zealand needs a 25 to 30-year-long housing strategy “that every political party agrees and signs to”, Smith said

“Labour has a plan that National is trying to drag down. What they should do is be working together on a long-term plan, not one that depends on the three-year election cycle,” Wilson said.

New Zealand housing strategy should be created not by the politicians or bureaucrats, rather by the people from the community, who have lived with experience, like the homeless, the renters, community housing providers, and people form wide ethnic communities including Māori or Pasifika, Smith said.

“A strategy that looks at the whole of the continuum and recognises into generational living affordable rentals, affordable home ownership, does not forget a strategy that includes building strong healthy and safe communities with clear mile stones and targets,” he said.

Smith said the country needed to have a strategy that is housing community “value” focused rather than the housing “volume” focused.

Community value was focused when each and every individual is seen as equal no matter their housing option, either state housing, private renter, or an owner-occupier.

Overcrowded households
In Auckland there are 92,000 households living in unaffordable rental situations spending more than the 30 percent of their net income on rent.

“Thirty six thousand households living in overcrowded conditions.”

In Auckland alone, there is 20,300 homeless people, where the Māori population is five times and Pasifika 10 times more disproportionately affected.

Kiwi Build was not an affordable housing solution to many New Zealanders as it was only affordable to middle class people with higher household incomes, Smith said.

Smith said it was noted at a recent Kiwi Build Affordability meeting with Auckland city mayor Phil Goff:

“Auckland Council’s chief economist stated in July that to buy a 3-bedroom Kiwi Build house at $650,000 they will need either an income of $106,000 with a $130k (20 percent) deposit or an income of $120,000 and a $65,000 (10 percent deposit) for the household to affordably purchase a Kiwi Build home (and that is with debt servicing ratio of 35 percent.

“This means that Kiwi Build houses are only affordable for the top 40 percent of Auckland’s households.”

• Housing issue not just ethnic – Pākehā leaders have ‘failed’, says author
• Pasifika voters want ‘hand-ups, not hand-outs’ in NZ housing crisis