Logie Jan: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Social Housing Reform (Flexible Purchasing and Remedial Matters) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call for the Green Party on this bill. We will be opposing this bill unfortunately. We see housing as a human right. Housing and shelter are at the absolute foundation of community of family and of individual well-being. Good warm stable affordable housing improves people’s health it improves educational outcomes it improves employment productivity it reduces costs to Government and it even reduces carbon emissions. What this bill does is nothing really to help us provide warm secure affordable housing for people in New Zealand. This is a shifting of the deckchairs on the Titanic.Right across this country we have people living on the streets or in their cars. We have heard stories from Invercargill from Tauranga from Hastings from Kaitāia from Auckland from Wellington from Porirua. All over this country people do not have their basic basic needs being met. This bill is not about building more houses. It is not about actually ensuring that those people get their needs met. What it is about is transferring to the community sector existing houses that are completely rundown as a result of generations of Government neglect. The community sector previously said: “Well OK we’re going to look at that because we think we can provide good wraparound services for people and maybe meet their needs a bit better than the Government.” But then it looked at the state of the housing and said: “Well actually no this isn’t really viable.”What this bill is about is enabling more flexibility to pass that over recognising the absolutely appalling state of so many of our State houses because of Government neglect. That should sit with the Government. We should acknowledge that this bill is a result of the failure of the Government to care for a key asset. The bill is not going to be increasing the housing available for people; it is just about selling it off. Part of that will go to private developers. We have heard from people in Glen Innes where as an example there has been a supposed transformation happening. Veterans were post-World War II given a house for life. They are no longer in that house. They had established a community. They knew their neighbours. They were connected. They had community. That has been destroyed by this so-called transformation.What this bill represents in part is more of this kind of transformation which is actually a destruction of community. It is a destabilisation of families that is going to disconnect children from their schools. It is going to put people in more fragile and vulnerable situations. I really struggle to see how anyone can think that that is going to be a good result. We are not hearing from the community sector that what it is being offered at the moment and being provided with is what it sees as part of the solution. We are hearing quite a lot of concern coming from those people. They know that a good thriving community housing sector will sit alongside a well-resourced Government State housing sector. We know that we have in Auckland as an example house prices going through the roof. Houses have been gaining and are earning more than most people in Auckland earn in a year. Again this bill is not going to help with that.This bill is reducing the function of Housing New Zealand even more. Housing New Zealand has already lost the ability to assess who will go into its houses and now this bill removes its policy function—its ability to provide policy advice to the Minister. So Housing New Zealand is being put intothe role of any other real estate agent as I think has already been said. If we think about that and about the fact that these are people who are the most vulnerable—because the Government has reduced the housing criteria by such an extent that anyone who is able to get into a house has to be in a pretty dire situation—none of that information and their needs will be fed through to the Minister. Is that going to be good policy making? I think not.