May 17, 2013
Earners shut out of housing market
Greens co-leader Metiria says home affordability for Māori families is as far away after the budget as it has ever been under the National-led government.
Finance Minister Bill English has been hailed as Bill the Builder after his fifth budget included measures to give the government more power to override local councils to free up land for development.
Ms Turei says there is no plan to build homes for low and middle income families.
"The people who have had the greatest drop in home ownership are middle income families. They have enough money maybe for a small mortgage but they cannot find affordable housing. This government doesn't have a plan for affordable housing. Nothing in this budget commits to increasing affordable housing, nothing requires developers to commit to affordable housing and there is no financial investment in affordable housing either. This Government has done nothing for those families," she says.
Ms Turei says the budget projection that house prices will rise between 23 percent and 46 percent by 2017 exposes the National Government’s lack of action on affordable housing.
The budget also includes a subsidy for private providers to take over provision of housing to high needs low income people, and it will shift responsibility for assessing whether someone qualifies for a state house from Housing New Zealand to the Ministry for Social Development.
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