Ardern Jacinda: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9129. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): As my colleague Kris Faafoi—whom I acknowledge for his excellent contribution to this debate—so eloquently outlined in his last address this is the traditional time in the House when members have the opportunity to propose alternative titles for bills in this case for the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill. I want to highlight how sterile the title of that bill comes across—as absolutely sterile. It sounds almost like it is meaningless like there is no substance necessarily—it is non-threatening. It certainly does not symbolise or adequately convey the depth of change that this bill is proposing.Because as we have discussed in this debate this bill fundamentally changes ministerial powers fundamentally changes the idea that Housing New Zealand is there to make sure that we have adequate community housing and answers a problem by creating a problem. So that is why I think this bill would almost be better labelled “The Problem with the Wrong Solution Bill”. I think this is almost really well-timed in the way that the problem was highlighted in the Salvation Army’s state of the nation report that came out today. It always does a section on housing and housing supply. Of course that means that over the last few years there has been a significant focus on Auckland and the pressures that exist in Auckland. But what it is starting to highlight is the contagion: the spread of almost the housing supply disease coming out of Auckland and into surrounding areas.If members on that side of the House have conversations with people who live in areas like Cambridge like Te Awamutu and like Hamilton they will hear the pressure that is coming down on those communities as the result of the housing crisis in Auckland. There is a flow-on effect. This is not solely an Auckland problem now. A significant part of this housing problem of course is the lack of community housing of State housing and of emergency housing to provide for those most vulnerable who are the first to suffer in a significant housing crisis. So what we heard from the Salvation Army today was that when you have a massive supply problem obviously as you can deduce simply transferring the stock from one agency to another does nothing to resolve that problem. It does absolutely nothing to solve that problem—but nor do any of the other solutions in this area that the National Party has proposed lately.The last proposal we had was from Minister Paula Bennett who suggested that we should simply ask those on waiting lists to transfer to other areas. I do not know how many members on that side of the Committee believe of the waiting lists they have in their area that they should simply go to those individuals and tell them that they should just move—they should just move. First that assumes that we do not have pressure in other parts of the country and we do thus proving that the idea of a bill that simply is transferring stock from one provider to another is not going to solve all problems. So the “Misguided Bill” perhaps would be a better title. If you asked people in the other parts of the country they would say they have waiting lists too so how is this solving the problem?I know that Jenny Salesa in particular has done some work in this area. She knows the impact that transferring people from the waiting lists in her areas would have—or how little impact it would have. So it assumes stock in other areas. The second assumption is that it assumes that those on waiting lists are not working. There is this derogatory message that is sent by saying we should simply tell people on waiting lists that they should go and move somewhere else; it assumes that they are somehow just sitting there waiting for a house to come up with no attachment to anything in the area such as employment. Sure it might be insecure employment or it might be multiple part-time jobs but there is a distinct assumption from the Government in that announcement that there is no connection from that person to that place.The next point I would like to make is that that connection is of course not just about work. The interesting point that Alan Johnson made around people who are connected to a community and the importance of housing in the state of the nation report this morning was that when we see those differences that emerge between two measures of poverty—material deprivation versus income poverty so there are two distinct measures there—they are both important. But someone has asked the question: how can you have income poverty but not have as high a measure on material deprivation? That is things like not having shoes to wear to school beds to sleep on or a warm dry home. How can you not show so highly on that measure and yet definitely be in income poverty?The answer to that question? Community—community. If you have connection to your community if you have family if you have support around you they can cushion poverty. Of course that is not an ideal situation. That is not the environment that we want—people in poverty existing simply because there are people around them who are propping them up. We want them to have that dignity for themselves but that speaks to the importance of community. What almost every policy including the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill ignores is the importance of keeping housing stock in the areas where people need to be connected to their community. That is what is so devastating about that Government’s policy. So I would say that this bill needs to be renamed the “Loss of Community Bill” the “Destruction of the Sense of Community Bill”.All too often I think as MPs we do—if you are listening and you have your eyes and ears open—hear examples and have manifestations of what the reality of these policies mean coming through our office doors. I still remember to this day the young woman who came to see me a few years ago now. She had grown up in a Housing New Zealand home in central Auckland. So it is fair to say of course that that has been an increasingly affluent area an increasingly gentrified area but by virtue of its history it has a significant number of Housing New Zealand homes or has done. This young woman had grown up in one of those homes. She had tragically lost her parents early—because she was a young woman—both of them within a relatively close time and proximity to each other. There she was left—she and her brother. This young woman sadly also suffered from a severe case of epileptic seizures. It prohibited her from holding down consistent work but she also had the care of her younger brother.She came to see me because she had grown up in a Housing New Zealand house that was made for a family not for two young people and Housing New Zealand had determined that it was time for her to move on. She came to see me because Housing New Zealand was not offering for her to stay in the community that she knew. It wanted her to move a significant distance outside of that community to another community entirely where she knew no one where she had no connections. That woman’s only family had become her local church and Housing New Zealand was asking her to move 20 minutes’ drive away from the only community that she had left as a young woman caring for her younger brother.This is what the policies that that Government is implementing around Housing New Zealand—the loss of stock the transfer of stock and the review of tenancy—are doing to people. It is easy for us to debate these things on paper as policies that sound as distant as the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill and forget that behind that sit people who are affected by these reforms. She was one of them. And what could I do for that young woman in a city where more and more Housing New Zealand stock was being sold and where there were fewer and fewer options for her and her brother to move into? She accepted she did not need a big house. She just wanted a house closer to people who could look after her and that is not a lot to ask.This is just an extra cog in the wheel of devastating housing reforms in the social sector that we have seen under this Government. They are like a plague on our ability to cater properly for our most vulnerable citizens and Labour cannot support a bill that simply moves the deckchairs around the Titanic.