COMMENT: Last year, I wrote an article in response to a claim by the United Nations’ special rapporteur on adequate housing, Leilani Farha, that New Zealand had a human rights crisis in housing. Farha provided no empirical basis for her claim, but that didn’t stop her from describing New Zealand’s problem as the “gutting of social housing and a speculative housing market”. Her report went on to peddle the same mind-numbingly nonsensical solutions that are so popular amongst those with an abundance of angst but little real understanding of how the world works. They included demands for a rent freeze; an audit of empty homes; a capital gains tax on the rich; a clampdown on speculators; and, just this week, a ban on auctions that “crucify first home buyers” . You get the picture.
Shortly after the article was published, Covid-19 distracted our attention and Farha’s report was consigned to the same pile to which other such virtue-signalling nonsense is sent. Sadly, however, the work of the luvvies, the left and the economically illiterate is never done and the claim resurfaced last week with the chief commissioner of the Human Rights Commission, Paul Hunt, arguing there had been a “massive human rights failure” in housing.
Launching a national inquiry into housing in New Zealand, Hunt said: “Successive governments have failed New Zealanders. New Zealand governments have signed up to a critically important human right: the right to a decent home. For generations, they have promised to create the conditions to enable everyone to live in a decent home, but this has not happened.
“For many people, especially young people, the goal of an affordable, healthy, accessible home has actually become more remote . . . The right to a decent home, although binding on New Zealand in international law, is almost invisible and unknown in Aotearoa.”
Start your property search
Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt has launched a national inquiry into housing. Photo / Supplied
As tempting as it would be to see Hunt’s extraordinary claim as an attempt to deflect attention from his recent decision to pay koha to a gang, I’m going to assume that he actually believes this nonsense and attempt to provide him with a basic education in housing so as to avoid the need to expend taxpayers hard-earned dollars on a report which will almost certainly miss the mark.
Firstly, let’s review the UN article to which Farha and Hunt refer in their claims and to which New Zealand has signed up. The clause in question states that:
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”
The claim is correct; New Zealand does indeed have a responsibility to provide adequate housing to its people. But that’s as far as the UN requirement goes. The declaration doesn’t impose specific measures for the simple reason that many nations wouldn’t have signed up to something which held them up to a more empirical level of scrutiny or accountability. Indeed, as far as I can see it’s generally only nations like New Zealand and the 37 other member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which take this stuff seriously and actually try and comply with their obligations, so resorting to the use of the word “crisis” to describe the performance of any of these nations, relative to the rest of the world, is scurrilous, sensationalist, and offensive.
Ashley Church: "Sadly, the work of the luvvies, the left and the economically illiterate is never done." Photo / Ted Baghurst
To the contrary, New Zealand Governments of both colours have taken their responsibility to house Kiwis seriously throughout most of our history – and while we could debate the specific measures and policies of various administrations – we can’t reasonably question the motivation.
Let’s look at some numbers.
At the extreme, we have an obligation to try and house the homeless. We don’t know the precise number of homeless, but we do know that the hardcore number of those who lack habitable accommodation is probably somewhere between 2,000 and 4,200 depending on what data you’re looking at – and we know that that number is dropping as a result of initiatives to reduce those numbers, introduced by National in 2016 and continued by the current Government. As a result, the homeless are a tiny fraction of 1% of our population and, while we should strive to eliminate homelessness altogether, we’re certainly not shirking our responsibilities.
Next, we have the 23,000 plus people on the much maligned Social Housing Register – a number which has climbed dramatically in recent years. However, those on this register aren’t homeless – and in many cases their reason for being on the register isn’t because their current accommodation isn’t adequate, it’s because the rent for Government-owned housing is subsidised and they (understandably) want to pay less than they’re paying now. As such, their circumstances don’t meet the UN definition of inadequate housing. “Want” is not the same thing as “need” and confusing these two things is a major cause of the extraordinary claims there is a crisis in housing.
Finally, we have the oft-repeated claim that housing is now unaffordable. This claim continues to be dishonest and we now know that housing, in 2021, is significantly more affordable than it was 30 years ago and only marginally less affordable than it was in 2001 due to the impact of reducing interest rates. The numbers don’t lie.
Perhaps, confronted with these facts, Hunt might leave the housing market to those who understand it and focus on real threats to human rights such as the growing moves to impose Government controls over free speech.
- Ashley Church is a property commentator for OneRoof.co.nz. Email him at [email protected]
