New Zealand is at a turning point

The NZ housing crisis is at a critical point, said Shamubeel at the CHA conference yesterday. New Zealand is at a turning point in finding a solution to its housing crisis, and the next steps will be critical, economist Shamubeel Equab says. New Zealand has years of under-investment in housing to catch-up and it will take the combined efforts of Government and the community housing sector to meet the vast need for affordable, warm dry homes.

“There are two elements to the housing crisis – one is the middle income New Zealanders being forced into renting for life, and the other is that we are seeing the most vulnerable among us being forced to the edges of society, the ghettoising of that part of our community.

“In that ghettoised community, we’re seeing issues like over-crowding, we’re also seeing them being pushed away from necessary amenities like access to transport, which impacts on the ability to access employment, education, and health services,” he says.

He says for those ghettoised communities, it is more than just providing a house.

“It is also about creating a pathway out of that desperation, as well as a house a lot of wrap-around services are required to give people the steps to get out of that trap they find themselves in.”Read more here.