Thank you Ani. What a great pity that the MSM always seem to allow these claims to be made without any challenge at all. Then to make matters worse they shut down any debate in their comments sections or on their social media platforms.
Many of us have lost any respect we might have had for our MSM journalists and have to go elsewhere to find real investigative journalism that is free of bias.
I always end up looking into these issues because I see the MSM uncritically and without context publish something that doesn't seem right. It should be the MSM that are providing explainers and examinations of claims made by politicians.
It has become increasingly noticeable, that it is people like your good self, The Taxpayers Union, and a select few others that are carrying the burden of holding politicians to account. The MSM is incapable of carrying out any form of investigative journalism currently.
My personal view is that the PIJF with all its quite ridiculous conditions, was the turning point.
Thanks for your well informed item. Such straw man arguments are well known to debaters. The MSM however will report Chloe as sincere and correctly critical of those self righteous Nats, Act and NZ First. If you twist statistics and make everything a government problem easily resolved by the goodwill of those in power, you can make political points but you can only fool some of the people some of the time. Thanks again Ani.
Yeah there is certainly a problem but this government has had less than two years to make change and the last lot made things worse over their 6 years.
I just wonder though, what about the around 131 000 net immigrants that arrived in 2024-25. Where did they all go to live? Does that not have any effect on the housing crisis? (328 100 migrants arrived and 196 500 kiwis left NZ)...
Certainly migration is a factor. I mentioned it briefly in the piece but didn't want to go down that substantial rabbithole because there is a lot to be explored and I just wanted to give an overview. But yes, migration and especially where migrants are settling is definitely impacting housing.
There are over 400 thousand people on a benefit of some kind and on the other side of the ledger, billions are written off by IRD from businesses going to the wall owing PAYE, GST and taxes in general. Your excellent article points out the ignorance of the greens and others.
Also I think you are political point scoring here. Just to say Labour Greens made it much worse means you would need to mow analysis than what you've stated here. You would need to trace this back to the 1980s and show what each succeeding govt did and didn't do. But we do know right now that closing down Kainga Ora's build programme the first of any momentum since the state housing of the late 40s to 60s is NOT the answer.
I'm not going to write much more Ani except to say that the CG putting people out of emergency housing with nothing to replace it, making the waitlist much tougher, and closing down social housing developments across the country are obviously going to increase homelessness. To debate exactly how the figures are obtained is semantics in the light of this. What Housing First state is exactly that safe housing FIRST while bringing in the wraparound services needed. This is an integrated system that's working in other countries when their governments invest enough in it. It's evident in both Auckland and regional cities that we are doing nothing like this so we have sick people becoming sicker on our streets!
Being a part of a coalition is not the same thing as having majority voting rights. And what about the impact covid had on emergency housing, the economy, and people's ability to find shelter in the homes of friends and family? I would wager people were less willing to accommodate (literally) in the wake of an international pandemic. Are you able to provide any figures to establish that that's not the case? I also note you haven't talked about the specific policies that the current government has instated which Chloe Schwarbick is referring to. Can you speak to them, and not results from a previous election period where the Green Party held a minority share? I would appreciate any further insight. Thank you.
Show much more analysis!! And the multiple factors you list are part of the austerity measures the CG is enacting - against Treasury and most economists advice!
I looked up Swabrick's statement in media, it was: 'Rough sleeping is up 89% in Auckland, 24% in Wellington and 73% in Christchurch. Homelessness is increasing in every part of the country. That didn’t just magically happen. It is the consequence of intentional political decisions.' Not the 'worst in the world,' and the political decisions she refers to will be: moving people out of emergency motels but not affirming they'd gone into social or emergency transitional housing. As well as making it much much tougher to go on the social / emergency housing wait list. I agree Greens Labour got nowhere near solving this decades-old crisis. However, they made a substantial start with the Kainga Ora housing developments completed and underway across the country. Designed to high building codes and urban design standards these were exactly what we had to be doing. Nearly all now shut down by the CG with their solution to use NGOs to build these not seen as adequate by the NGOs themselves. Housing First is a coalition of these, and they know at the coal-face and through evidence-based research the complex issues involved that you describe, and others many would not have thought of. But they struggle with funding!!! https://www.housingfirst.co.nz/our-collective/
Thanks for your thoughtful comment You’re right that Swarbrick didn’t literally say “worst in the world” in that particular interview, but the framing she uses still leans heavily on the broad “homelessness is up everywhere” line without acknowledging the very different definitions and data sources at play. For example, the 89% Auckland figure comes from an outreach provider street count, while Wellington and Christchurch’s numbers come from different local methodologies. Without context, those stats make it sound like a uniform national surge, when the reality is patchier and more complex.
On the “intentional political decisions” point, I agree the Government’s changes to emergency housing and the waitlist criteria are part of the picture, but so are multiple other factors including the rental market tightening, migration pressures, and entrenched mental health and addiction crises that Housing First themselves highlight. It’s too simplistic to pin the whole increase on a few months of new government policy, just as it’s too generous to give the last government full credit for every Kāinga Ora build that happened on their watch.
I agree that many of the Kāinga Ora developments were exactly the sort of builds we need, but the Greens and Labour also presided over ballooning emergency motel use, a quadrupling of the public housing waitlist, and no measurable reduction in rough sleeping in the cities that have been counting it consistently. The problem is decades old, yes but it’s also worsened in recent years, and it’s disingenuous for anyone, past or present, to pretend otherwise.
Being a part of a coalition is not the same thing as having majority voting rights. And what about the impact covid had on emergency housing, the economy, and people's ability to find shelter in the homes of friends and family? I would wager people were less willing to accommodate (literally) in the wake of an international pandemic. Are you able to provide any figures to establish that that's not the case? I also note you haven't talked about the specific policies that the current government has instated which Chloe Schwarbick is referring to. Can you speak to them, and not results from a previous election period where the Green Party held a minority share? I would appreciate any further insight. Thank you.
Being a part of a coalition is not the same thing as having majority voting rights. And what about the impact covid had on emergency housing, the economy, and people's ability to find shelter in the homes of friends and family? I would wager people were less willing to accommodate (literally) in the wake of an international pandemic. Are you able to provide any figures to establish that that's not the case? I also note you haven't talked about the specific policies that the current government has instated which Chloe Schwarbick is referring to. Can you speak to them, and not results from a previous election period where the Green Party held a minority share? I would appreciate any further insight. Thank you.
Thank you Ani. What a great pity that the MSM always seem to allow these claims to be made without any challenge at all. Then to make matters worse they shut down any debate in their comments sections or on their social media platforms.
Many of us have lost any respect we might have had for our MSM journalists and have to go elsewhere to find real investigative journalism that is free of bias.
I always end up looking into these issues because I see the MSM uncritically and without context publish something that doesn't seem right. It should be the MSM that are providing explainers and examinations of claims made by politicians.
It has become increasingly noticeable, that it is people like your good self, The Taxpayers Union, and a select few others that are carrying the burden of holding politicians to account. The MSM is incapable of carrying out any form of investigative journalism currently.
My personal view is that the PIJF with all its quite ridiculous conditions, was the turning point.
Thanks for your well informed item. Such straw man arguments are well known to debaters. The MSM however will report Chloe as sincere and correctly critical of those self righteous Nats, Act and NZ First. If you twist statistics and make everything a government problem easily resolved by the goodwill of those in power, you can make political points but you can only fool some of the people some of the time. Thanks again Ani.
Yeah there is certainly a problem but this government has had less than two years to make change and the last lot made things worse over their 6 years.
Thanks for looking into this Ani!
I just wonder though, what about the around 131 000 net immigrants that arrived in 2024-25. Where did they all go to live? Does that not have any effect on the housing crisis? (328 100 migrants arrived and 196 500 kiwis left NZ)...
Certainly migration is a factor. I mentioned it briefly in the piece but didn't want to go down that substantial rabbithole because there is a lot to be explored and I just wanted to give an overview. But yes, migration and especially where migrants are settling is definitely impacting housing.
There are over 400 thousand people on a benefit of some kind and on the other side of the ledger, billions are written off by IRD from businesses going to the wall owing PAYE, GST and taxes in general. Your excellent article points out the ignorance of the greens and others.
So sad to see the decline of the Greens into such a travesty of their original aims.
Thank you
Also I think you are political point scoring here. Just to say Labour Greens made it much worse means you would need to mow analysis than what you've stated here. You would need to trace this back to the 1980s and show what each succeeding govt did and didn't do. But we do know right now that closing down Kainga Ora's build programme the first of any momentum since the state housing of the late 40s to 60s is NOT the answer.
I'm not going to write much more Ani except to say that the CG putting people out of emergency housing with nothing to replace it, making the waitlist much tougher, and closing down social housing developments across the country are obviously going to increase homelessness. To debate exactly how the figures are obtained is semantics in the light of this. What Housing First state is exactly that safe housing FIRST while bringing in the wraparound services needed. This is an integrated system that's working in other countries when their governments invest enough in it. It's evident in both Auckland and regional cities that we are doing nothing like this so we have sick people becoming sicker on our streets!
Thick as a brick not fit to be an MP
Being a part of a coalition is not the same thing as having majority voting rights. And what about the impact covid had on emergency housing, the economy, and people's ability to find shelter in the homes of friends and family? I would wager people were less willing to accommodate (literally) in the wake of an international pandemic. Are you able to provide any figures to establish that that's not the case? I also note you haven't talked about the specific policies that the current government has instated which Chloe Schwarbick is referring to. Can you speak to them, and not results from a previous election period where the Green Party held a minority share? I would appreciate any further insight. Thank you.
Show much more analysis!! And the multiple factors you list are part of the austerity measures the CG is enacting - against Treasury and most economists advice!
I looked up Swabrick's statement in media, it was: 'Rough sleeping is up 89% in Auckland, 24% in Wellington and 73% in Christchurch. Homelessness is increasing in every part of the country. That didn’t just magically happen. It is the consequence of intentional political decisions.' Not the 'worst in the world,' and the political decisions she refers to will be: moving people out of emergency motels but not affirming they'd gone into social or emergency transitional housing. As well as making it much much tougher to go on the social / emergency housing wait list. I agree Greens Labour got nowhere near solving this decades-old crisis. However, they made a substantial start with the Kainga Ora housing developments completed and underway across the country. Designed to high building codes and urban design standards these were exactly what we had to be doing. Nearly all now shut down by the CG with their solution to use NGOs to build these not seen as adequate by the NGOs themselves. Housing First is a coalition of these, and they know at the coal-face and through evidence-based research the complex issues involved that you describe, and others many would not have thought of. But they struggle with funding!!! https://www.housingfirst.co.nz/our-collective/
Thanks for your thoughtful comment You’re right that Swarbrick didn’t literally say “worst in the world” in that particular interview, but the framing she uses still leans heavily on the broad “homelessness is up everywhere” line without acknowledging the very different definitions and data sources at play. For example, the 89% Auckland figure comes from an outreach provider street count, while Wellington and Christchurch’s numbers come from different local methodologies. Without context, those stats make it sound like a uniform national surge, when the reality is patchier and more complex.
On the “intentional political decisions” point, I agree the Government’s changes to emergency housing and the waitlist criteria are part of the picture, but so are multiple other factors including the rental market tightening, migration pressures, and entrenched mental health and addiction crises that Housing First themselves highlight. It’s too simplistic to pin the whole increase on a few months of new government policy, just as it’s too generous to give the last government full credit for every Kāinga Ora build that happened on their watch.
I agree that many of the Kāinga Ora developments were exactly the sort of builds we need, but the Greens and Labour also presided over ballooning emergency motel use, a quadrupling of the public housing waitlist, and no measurable reduction in rough sleeping in the cities that have been counting it consistently. The problem is decades old, yes but it’s also worsened in recent years, and it’s disingenuous for anyone, past or present, to pretend otherwise.
Yup, yup... yup
Being a part of a coalition is not the same thing as having majority voting rights. And what about the impact covid had on emergency housing, the economy, and people's ability to find shelter in the homes of friends and family? I would wager people were less willing to accommodate (literally) in the wake of an international pandemic. Are you able to provide any figures to establish that that's not the case? I also note you haven't talked about the specific policies that the current government has instated which Chloe Schwarbick is referring to. Can you speak to them, and not results from a previous election period where the Green Party held a minority share? I would appreciate any further insight. Thank you.
Being a part of a coalition is not the same thing as having majority voting rights. And what about the impact covid had on emergency housing, the economy, and people's ability to find shelter in the homes of friends and family? I would wager people were less willing to accommodate (literally) in the wake of an international pandemic. Are you able to provide any figures to establish that that's not the case? I also note you haven't talked about the specific policies that the current government has instated which Chloe Schwarbick is referring to. Can you speak to them, and not results from a previous election period where the Green Party held a minority share? I would appreciate any further insight. Thank you.
Back in the day, we used to have Mental Hospitals. I don't think they were an ideal solution, esp for those with marginal mental health problems.
But back in those days I don't believe we had any "rough sleepers", and definitely not the sort of tragedies that have occurred today in ChCh.
I never understood why the Mental Hospitals were quite suddenly abandoned; I think it may have been copying some international "PC" concept.......