Party Political Broadcast

 

This is not a party political broadcast.

But read it anyway!

 

Being here in the UK it has been interesting waking every morning, making a cuppa and catching up with the New Zealand newspapers on my pc.

Of course, it’s evening time in New Zealand when I am reading the papers, not that that is relevant to anything, but always makes me feel quite weird that I am living in a Tardis time machine and living in my own past.

I confess that the NZ newspaper headlines over the past few weeks has made for deeply depressing reading first thing in my morning.

Gang violence.  Drive by shootings. Gang utu. Bodies found. Murder investigations.  Murder convictions.  Police shootings. Grandmother killed.  Manslaughter.  Drug deaths. Drug rings.  Sex convictions.

It’s all rather appalling, depressing and even embarrassing to read from afar.  Guess in some ways I should be pleased to be away from it all. 

I know of some who will say, ‘then don’t read it’.  Because I know those who won’t read anything they’d rather not know about.  I confess to doing so with many articles on the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.  But I do go back later and ensure I am up to date with the reality there.  It is stupid to bury one’s head in the sand and avoiding acknowledging and learning what is happening in the world around you.  That’s with anything negative that one does not wish to learn about.  It does not make for an informed, balanced you.

There are none more ignorant than those who want to be ignorant.

So at 6 a.m. my time this morning I made my cuppa and began reading latest NZ Herald online issue.  And there was one rather different headline today that took my initial attention.

In fact, there were two rather different but similar headlines in the papers I have read today.  One in the NZ paper and one in a British paper today that had me simmer a little.

I shall address the NZ Herald headline first:

 ‘First-home buyers face potential $1000 monthly rise in mortgage payments’.

I have been following a number of such articles this year as it does relate to factors facing my immediate family.  One son is having to re-mortgage his family home and the other is mortgaging for the first time.  Hence these financial articles hit a personal nerve of mine.  So much so I find them almost as repugnant reading as the other negative, crime-ridden headlines.

Today’s headline reminded me that a year ago the average interest rate was 3.3%.  At todays market it averages 4.63%.  Of course the rates are dependent on the term of the loans.  But the change in interest rates does mean that a borrower could now be paying around $1,000+ a month MORE than a year ago. 

It seems so very numbing.

In saying that, I do keep reminding those who will listen that as a young mother with one baby my husband and I purchased our first house and were paying an 18.5% interest rate – and that we felt good about due to many of our friends having to pay over 20%. 

On top of that, many, and if I recall correctly, including my husband and I, also had a second mortgage to enable us to get into our first ever subdivisional square-boxed, fibrolite, tin roofed home.  At that same high interest rate. 

The past few years have had me ride that roller coaster ride my sons have had in endeavouring to purchase their first homes.  Yes, prices of homes have risen exorbitantly high.  Yet mortgage rates had been getting lower and lower. 

Housing and getting the new generation into houses has been a major topic of general conversation for those past same years. 

Newspapers, financiers, builders, government officials have highlighted and headlined the difficulties the Gen X, Y, Z or whatever the younger generation is now called have had and are having in getting themselves into their first homes.

I am not going to go anywhere near the argument many have heard me spout before – about life and expectations now as opposed to the 18-24% generation of interest payers I was in.  It’s a blog or speech many have already heard.

But what has always been highlighted in my mind when these conversations come up is the lack of government assistance to those who desperately want and need to get into their own homes.

This government, and the previous, have and do rant on about the difficulties of young couples and families in being able to afford homes that are rising in value by the hour.

Yet they are doing and have done nothing about it. 

Apart from the good old Winston’s Kiwisaver scheme, there is no other government, or socialistic assistance or encouragement for these desperately search and striving families to be able to secure their own roofs over their heads.

Why not?  And thank God for Winston!

So.

Think back to post Second World War years, post depression times.

In 1936 the government of the time renamed a mortgage arm they already had in place to The State Advances Corporation. 

The State Advances Corporation was a government mortgage scheme initially set up to aid ex-servicemen and their families into their own homes.  At that time the government mortgage had an interest rate of 3%.

Over the years State Advances Corporation evolved to include any civilians on small incomes to gain a government 3% loan enabling them to purchase a house.  It was still at a 3% interest rate in the early 1960’s when the market interest rates were between 4.5 to 5.5%.  It was government assistance for those who needed it to buy their first homes.

At that time there was also something called Child Benefit (or Family Benefit) where all families with children were given a weekly government benefit for each child they had.    

Should the family still not have enough equity and mortgage available to get into their own home, the government would allow the family to ‘capitalise’ the family benefit to add yet more assistance in financing their new home.

This is exactly how my parents purchased their first ever home in 1968 in Mangere Central.  They used the government loan assistance, plus capitalised the family benefit they were getting for me and my younger sister.

Many people with families who had been unable to save enough to bridge the gap between the cost of a house and the loan limit were actually able to obtain a house.  And those families who were slow savers no longer had to wait.

So.

Why, if the government/governments who profess to really care and worry about their ever increasing number of homeless or those who cannot afford to buy their own homes not establish exactly what the governments of the 1930’s did?

They already pay monies out to those on low incomes to assist with rent.  And low income families do received a Working for Families grant.  So why not use these payments as the system used to do?

ASSIST PEOPLE NOW into getting into their own homes.

Instead of it being payments literally going into a bottomless pit, make it payments that goes into roofs over their heads. 

And this brings me to the second newspaper headline in today’s paper that caught my attention.  This time in a British paper, The Times.

              ‘Johnson to let benefit claimants buy homes’.

Hurrah!  Exactly what I’ve been discussing above.

Boris has come up with this brilliant idea.  An idea that our post-war New Zealand government initiated and successfully implemented.  For decades.

The Labour government of 1936.

Michael Joseph Savage was the NZ Prime Minister.  The infamous (and I say that with the greatest of respect) Finance Minister, Sir Walter Nash. 

Those men and that government – and I repeat and remind you, it was a Labour government – set New Zealanders on the road to home ownership by establishing the State Advances Corporation; and also the Labour government who put Family Benefit into action.  (If you really knew your NZ political history you could say it was a government back in 1885, long before Labour & National parties existed, that initiated something that eventually evolved into Family Benefit).

Boris is saying in today’s newspapers that he thinks lower paid workers should be able to use their housing benefits their government already gives them to pay their present rents, and use them to buy homes. 

Boris wants to change the rules so people can use welfare payments to get mortgages.  Is this a new world thought!?  No.  New Zealand USED to do it.

The UK has 30 BILLION pounds a year in benefits to its citizens helping them pay rent.  Why not use it to pay a mortgage? 

The article – it’s truly interesting – it’s almost replicated in what our previous governments used to do.

Goodness knows how many billions of NZ dollars the Kiwi taxpayers pay in rental allowances to beneficiaries and those on low incomes.  PLUS the Working For Families benefit is pays to the low income households.

Look – you may think this reads as a political party broadcast for the Labour Party.  By a stalwart.

It is far from that.  I’m criticising this present Labour government for NOT doing it. 

And nor has the opposition parties come up with anything remotely aligned to helping those trying to get into new homes.

This blog is a call for many or all of you to – think about it.

Why hasn’t this government, the one who has campaigned on helping those that need help, actually done something real, something substantial to help those who are now falling further and further back on the list of possible home stability?

I stew on how much money has been literally wasted these past years on inane, vague schemes and systems that are put into place to help but a few of our disassociated members of our society.

And stew all the more when I read almost buried articles on nepotism among our government head where family members have been awarded tens of thousands of dollars for vague schemes and ideas that we will never see a defined outcome.

Want to get the homeless and low income earners and families into homes? Stop political point scoring on issues that should be down on the list – and address one of the most important ones.

Labour Party.  National Party.  Green Party.  Maori Party.  Act Party.  Whatever Other Party.

Help the growing percentage of your constituents who feel so helplessly helpless in being able to get their own roofs over their heads.  Do something like the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, 1960's governments did - helping Kiwis.