Commonwealth Connection

  Selena and Shamubeel Eaqub. Source: Idealog, (2015).

Housing is a big issue for Kiwi’s and there's a commonwealth connection.
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub (2015) makes comment on the situation in an report from Idealog titled "A culture of despair": How the NZ property dream became a nightmare. Eaqub said, “we’ve created a housing market impossible for young people to enter, a society one step away from a landed-class system, and a culture of despair”. The story goes on about what’s going wrong and how to fix things up. For example: more rights and responsibilities for renters, embracing technological property management systems, improving housing construction methods, effective land use and reformed governmental policy settings. Shamubeel and his wife Selena (pictured above) have written a book titled Generation Rent: Rethinking New Zealand’s Priorities which is mentioned within the report. The report continues and focuses on ‘affordable’ small home examples with links to company websites and seems advertorial in nature.

Our Australian neighbours face similar issues regarding housing. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) published a story titled “we're spending billions on the housing crisis — so why is homelessness in Australia getting worse?” (2018). The lead caption declares “Australia's homelessness figures are going in the wrong direction, and housing experts warn we're about to recommit to a failing policy”. As the caption suggests, the issues of home ownership, rental prices and homelessness grow due to ineffective policy settings.

Homeless Australian. Source: ABC, (2018).

Economist Saul Eslake says, "we've had pressure on both the demand and the supply sides of Australia's housing markets" and "that in turn has increased the competition that low-income households face seeking to get rental accommodation at rents they can afford”. Mr Eslake blames a lack of investment and surmised that politicians don’t focus on the issue because it’s a long term issue that doesn’t attract short term votes. This political deficit seems to correlate with the situation in New Zealand.

Further afield in Canada, the housing conundrum worsens also. The Financial Times (2018) reports on the housing market with a story heading Canada’s housing market flirts with disaster. The story leads in with the caption, “A cocktail of loose lending, overseas cash and mounting household debt has triggered concern of an overheating market”. The list of issues mentioned in the report are: reno-viction (where renters are evicted when owners renovate and charge a higher price for the accommodation), growing debt, low interest rates, slack control on foreign investing, increased local government rates, increased insurance premiums, threat of interest rate rise, over investing, and risky housing development deals.

Rising debt in Canada relating to housing. Source: Financial Times, (2018).

The report falls short in regards to naming major causal influence, i.e. economic ideology. As a matter of fact, so do the other reports. Sure, globalisation is part of the mix but it’s the neoliberal capitalist agenda coupled with growth based ideals that is driving this market approach to housing. And this behaviour undermines our societal foundations. The economic system has normalised harvesting massive profits by the few at the cost of the many. From another perspective, people who own properties will be rubbing their hands together when they hear about the housing markets increases. No matter which way we look at it, homelessness is also increasing. 

The truth is there are more people than homes in Aotearoa and is what market driven capitalists dream of . According to Stats NZ, the number of households has increased by 6.6 percent since 2006. In 2013, New Zealand had 1,549,890 households, up from 1,454,175 in 2006. So with our population moving towards 5 million it makes sense that demand for housing has caused a pressure cooker effect. To add to this, ghost homes have become a thing. According to NZ Herald 2016, the vacancy rate of houses and apartments for Auckland shows 6.6. % (33,000 dwellings) and is higher than Sydney 5.2% or Melbourne 4.8%. These ghost houses are apparently left empty by speculators as a form of property banking and as a means to control 'the market'. 

The reports from Idealog, ABC and The Financial Times all have similarities in their treatment of the issues around homelessness, accommodation and house prices. Unfortunately none of them come close to mentioning neoliberal economics or growth based ideology.

Recently the current government in NZ announced (2018) their “flagship $2 billion KiwiBuild programme which aims to build 100,000 affordable houses over the next decade, with half of those in Auckland” (RNZ). This may seem like a substantial commitment to the housing madness and again it’s quite likely just another failed attempt to patch over the massive chasm caused by the perpetual economic growth fallacy. Latest figures from Statistics NZ 2018, “indicate that NZ’s population growth is 1.98% and the world population growth is 1.19%” also “our life expectancy at birth is 83.4 for females and 80.0 for males. The world life expectancy at birth is 73.1 for females and 68.6 for males”. From my basic mathematical analysis, the population is growing faster here in Aotearoa than elsewhere and by simple detuction this is due to the arrival of people wanting to get away from over populated, unsafe and polluted places elsewhere.

As a commonwealth nation New Zealand is blessed with being far from the maddening crowds, nevertheless, globalisation and freemarketism reigns supreme. Growth based doctrine dictates our terms of economic engagement and enshrines the global elitist’s ability to manage and control the markets and society itself.