May 17, 2023
Fatal fire points to housing policy failure
Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, who also holds the associate housing portfolio for homelessness, says the country needs to take stock after the Loafers Fire.
At least six people are known to have died in the fire which ripped through the multi-storey Wellington boarding house just after midnight on Tuesday.
Ms Davidson says it was a preventable tragedy which affected particularly vulnerable people forced into unsafe and low quality accommodation.
“We’re arrived at a point where the people with the least power and the least resource are forced into choices of having a home that are clearly unsafe and our country needs to take stock of why we have not prioritised massive upscaling of public housing, affordable quality housing that is safe for people to put their roots down,” she says.
Ms Davidson says the economic system now treats housing as a way for some in society rather than a core human right and a public good.