Everyone Deserves Quality Housing

By VUW International Socialists / ISO

ACT leader David Seymour, Labour leader Chris Hipkins, and National leader Christopher Luxon all seem to agree that the “kiwi dream” is “home ownership”. Luxon is certainly living the dream: he owns three properties while living rent-free in Premier House. But what’s this “dream” really about?

Let’s start with the dreams of Māori. Although Māori never ceded sovereignty, the British “Crown” unilaterally claimed to govern all of what it called New Zealand—with force, as they saw fit. The colonial government and private business then proceeded to physically dispossess Māori through clearly unjust manipulative laws which undermined Māori collective ownership, and by outright military force when Māori rightly resisted. Through these measures, 95 percent of Aotearoa has been snatched from Māori. If owning your own home is a kiwi dream, let’s start with Land Back.

But even within the postcolonial parameters which the ACT, Labour, and National leaders assume are unmovable, the “dream” is a grift. It’s inevitable that the wealth concentration inherent in capitalism will result in increasing precarity and decreasing wealth for the vast majority, and this affects housing as much as every other aspect of our lives. The supposed dream has been increasingly unobtainable for “kiwis”, with home ownership rates decreasing and house prices increasing massively faster than incomes. 

As an alternative, we pay a landlord to live in a property they own. After our employers have taken the majority of the value we created, we must then hand over to landlords a large portion of what’s left. In Te Whanganui-a-Tara, this means twelve hours of minimum wage work each week just to pay the median rent on a room in a three bedroom flat. Of course, you’ll have to work extra if you also want food and other essentials. Bandaid reforms for this systemic power imbalance, such as a government accommodation supplement payment, ultimately serve to funnel more wealth into landlords’ pockets. Meanwhile, landlords are incentivised to provide the lowest possible quality of accommodation, maximising profit from their investment while many tenants live in cold, mouldy slums.

If we fail to demonstrate enough economic value, capitalism will just allow us to become unhoused. Joel MacManus, writing for the Spinoff, reports the 2023 census identified 112,496 people in Aotearoa were “severely housing deprived”—that’ll have been an underestimate, and we know things have gotten much worse. What’s more, international research shows homelessness results in an increased likelihood of early death. The only safety nets against this—such as public housing—are the ones we’ve fought for, won, and must actively defend if we want to maintain them.

Everyone deserves the stability and safety of quality accommodation that isn’t under constant threat of being ripped out from beneath them. We can have a future that doesn't result in the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, but where we share resources fairly. We can start with more public housing to eliminate homelessness, capping rent, and taxing wealth and capital gains. But we need to go much further. We can replace capitalism with a social system where quality accommodation is a basic right—where being housed isn’t conditional on a person’s economic value. Let’s make that future happen!