June 25, 2015
Little looks to past for housing change
Labour leader Andrew Little is promising a major announcement about how his party would tackle the housing crisis.
He says Labour is committed to increasing home ownership levels, and it could draw on past models.
"You know back in the fifties when you had the State Advances Corporation and people got concessionary loans. Of course you didn’t have to have deposits of hundreds of thousands of dollars. You could get together your deposit, get a loan backed by the state and you’d be in your house and paying it off. That’s the sort of thing we need to see happening. The Government’s got to take a lead on it and apply a bit of intervention, but when people own their own house they can make their own decisions, feel a bit more secure about it, an that’s what we’ve got to get back to," Mr Little says.
He says the Prime Minister’s comment that people living in cold, damp state houses should speak to their landlord is patronizing, given that the reason people speaking out is their complaints are ignored by Housing New Zealand.
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