9 Jun 1998 Jahr - Govt acquires 900 houses to convert into state housing in Auckland
Beschreibung:
The Government is buying up hundreds of homes in outer Auckland to house State tenants but still stands accused of forcing low-income families into "ghettos" on the fringes of the region.
The invisible hand of market rents, even with the accommodation supplement for the poor, continues to squeeze people out of high-rent central suburbs and into distant cheaper ones, according to critics.
Market rents, they say, are unpicking the philosophy of earlier Governments, which sought to integrate rich and poor in the same suburbs to reflect our self-image as an egalitarian society.
Some of the worst effects are that communities get broken up and elderly people can become disoriented, says Auckland University housing specialist Dr Laurence Murphy. "Moving out after a long time is kind of like a bereavement for some people because it breaks up their whole sense of identity."
Since last June, Housing New Zealand has acquired 350 new homes in Auckland. And in coming months a further 333 will be built as part of its acquisition of 907 properties over an 18-month period.
But they are mainly in the south and west, with comparatively few on the isthmus. The big winner from the construction boom is the Counties-Manukau area.
The Government-owned company has 213 of its 23,278 Auckland homes on the market. It also leases 747 homes.
Since mid-1993 it has slashed its Auckland State-housing stock by almost 1000 homes in a buy-and-sell (mainly sell) programme.
This "reconfiguration" is, it says, about "matching the supply with the need for housing." The state-housing buy-up is the company's biggest since it was created in 1992.
However, it is tagged "ghettoisation" by Labour and the Alliance and "economic cleansing" of the central city by Sue Henry, of the Housing Lobby.
The Labour housing spokesman, Graham Kelly, said one of the policy's consequences would be to foster racial disharmony, because a significant number of state tenants were Maori and Pacific Islanders.
The Minister of Housing, Murray McCully, said during the sale of the "unsatisfactory" Madelaine-Esperance block of State flats near Glendowie College last year for an estimated $13 million, that the company was disposing of vacant properties in areas of low or no demand.
Much of the income would go towards buying housing in high-demand areas. The reconfiguration programme was "breathing new life into communities," he said.
Dr Murphy, a senior geography lecturer, says in his contribution to a new book on public policy that State tenants are being priced out of desirable suburbs such as Orakei.
State tenants would "eventually be `cleared'" out of such areas by market rents.
"The economic logic driving the process may seem impeccable but the social implications are startling and are likely to reinforce a `ghettoisation' of State tenants on the urban periphery," he says.
Market rents are eroding the legacy of a widely dispersed stock of state housing, writes Dr Murphy, and could increase social and geographical polarisation, "with all its attendant social costs."
He said that while shifting to the urban fringe could have benefits, such as low rents and brand new houses, its disadvantages could include difficulties getting to work, school, or the family doctor.
And large concentrations of State housing - such as at the Chapel Park sub-division in the East Tamaki area - often struck opposition from home owners, who feared declining property values. - NZPA
Supplied by New Zealand Press Association.
Source: GOVT ACCUSED OF CREATING STATE HOUSE GHETTOS.
590 words
19 January 1999
The Evening Post
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