NationStates

This, is Cyndi. She’s 10 years old this July and lives with her family in Manukau.
Her parents are low income renters.
Cyndi shares a room with her sister and cousins.
They keep the heater on all day and all night in every room of their uninsulated house.
Cindy seems to get sick more often than her friends.

Cindy’s story is the norm for many.
22% of people in Manukau live in overcrowded homes. [INSERT GRAPH BELOW]
Measures of housing affordability typically ignore the quality dimension even though it is
an integral component to affordability
The quality of housing in New Zealand is terrible and the rental market is even worse than
the national average, estimates suggest up to 1.8 million private dwellings are under
insulated. Improving the quality of homes provided in New Zealand could save up to $500
million in health costs.
Unfortunately, rents for healthy and unhealthy properties alike have outstripped wage
growth across New Zealand.

Cyndi’s parents have been on the social housing waiting list for a state home for years.
Currently, rent takes up more than 30% of their household income
More and more families like Cyndi’s have been unable to turn to social housing for
affordable homes.

Approximately 35% of rental households pay more than 30% of their incomes on housing.
Social housing provides protection from unaffordable market rents for low income renters.
Despite the crisis, less than 500 state homes per year were built between 1992 and 2013.
In 2013, National Government sold off thousands of state homes in an attempt to create a
competitive quasi market for social housing
Between 2015 and 2018 the state housing wait list more than doubled to 11,000 people.

Cyndi’s family are lucky enough to have kept the same address for years, but they have also faced
two lease renewals and accompanying rent increases, which they are struggling to keep up with.
Cyndi’s parents wish the accommodation supplement helped with these increases.

Despite yearly increases in rent, the maximum entitlement allowed under the
accommodation supplement remained stagnant for 13 years, until a minor adjustment
was made in April 2018.
The accommodation supplements stagnation can potentially be explained by research that
suggests that landlords simply capture any increases in rental subsidies by raising their
rental prices.
In essence, the supplement becomes a subsidy for the middle class.
Such research is particularly concerning, as it sheds light on the ineffectiveness of an
annual $1.3 billion package.

Cyndi’s dad works locally but her mum has to catch the train to the CBD 6 days a week.
If Cyndi’s parents cannot retain the same address in the next lease negotiation, they will have to
move further away seeking cheaper rents. However, any rental savings would be offset by
increases in transport costs.

In reality, Housing costs are not restricted to rental costs. Time and money spent
commuting can make affordable rents, unaffordable.
In addition to this, vehicle based commuting over long distances can contribute to a lower
quality of life, just like cold homes.
However, popular but crude measures of affordability tend to ignore these geographic
factors, yet such measures heavily inform national and regional housing policy.
Auckland’s twentieth-century pro-sprawl policies and their low-density urban form have
greatly restricted people’s ability to live closer to jobs, amenities and schools.
The use of crude affordability measures encourages groups like Demographia to propose
sprawl as a solution to the affordability crisis.

Cyndi wonders why she and her family suffer from these problems and why her friends’ families
do not.
She knows her family gets government support but it doesn’t seem to be enough.
She wants a secure, warm home where she and her family are not left at the mercy of government
failure.
Government policies in social housing, rent subsidization and urban form have played a
key role in the creation of the unaffordability crisis facing low income renters.
But, there are still important unresolved questions.
· What have been the effects of the quasi market reforms in social housing for
low income renters?
· Has the accommodation supplement been effectively captured by landlords?

· How important are transportation and density policies to the provision of
quality rental housing?

To improve the lives of children and families like Cindy, we ask for your support in changing the
narrative of New Zealand’s housing affordability crisis