‘Abject failure’: Jacinda Ardern’s key election plank set to implode

Jacinda Ardern vowed to end homelessness and lift children out of poverty. Instead she’s spent $1.2bn on motels and emergency housing where families are exposed to crime and sexual assault.

Jacinda Ardern at Te Puia New Zealand Mori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua. Picture: Getty Images.

One of the key planks of Jacinda Ardern’s 2017 election campaign – to defeat homelessness and lift children out of poverty – is at risk of imploding, with the Labour government forced to spend more than $1.2bn placing families in motels and emergency housing.

After failing even to come close to delivering on its promise to build 100,000 state houses, the government has turned to the private sector, housing homeless and low income families in often substandard motels where, it was revealed this week, sexual assault and crime are rife.

Ardern came to power in 2017 vowing to end the homelessness crisis threatening to engulf the country. In 2018 then Housing Minister Phil Twyford promised to deliver 1000 houses in the first year of government, with a total of 10,000 by 2021; and 100,000 within 10 years, via the much vaunted KiwiBuild scheme.

Slamming the previous National government’s spend of $90,000 a year on motel accommodation for low income families, Twyford pointed to it as proof his predecessor had failed to tackle the housing crisis.

Yet as of July this year, only 1,366 new state homes have been built – 1.4 per cent of the promised total. Meanwhile, the government is spending more than $1m a day on motels – more than 10 times the cost under National. What’s more, under Ms Ardern the number of families on the state house waiting list has risen from 5000 to more than 25,000 while, despite the number of children living in poverty trending down, the number sleeping in cars has risen by around 340 per cent, according to figures released to the opposition National party.

Fenton St, one of the main roads into Rotorua has become renowned for the number of low income families housed in motels.

While these figures are not unexpected, the spotlight has once more fallen on what the Salvation Army is now calling a housing catastrophe after an investigation into government funded emergency housing in the tourist city of Rotorua exposed appalling living conditions – with one family of six crushed into one room – and claims of drug crime and sexual abuse by a security firm hired to guard tenants.

Allegations in the NZ TV investigation include that security guards had sex with vulnerable clients, used drugs on the job and employed patched gang members to work some shifts. One woman was reportedly so terrified of the guards she bought a car to live in with her child rather than remain in a Rotorua motel, while others were allegedly evicted with no warning.

NZ Human Rights Commission chief Paul Hunt, who last year launched an investigation into the “massive human rights failure” of the country’s housing crisis, said he was horrified at the findings.

“We’re really concerned about this … the situation in Rotorua is at the extreme end of the spectrum,” Mr Hunt told NZ TV.

National leader Christopher Luxon has leapt on the accusations, calling Labour’s record on housing an “abject failure” and joining the minor party Te Pati Maori in calling for an independent inquiry into the motels used in Rotorua’s housing.

His housing spokesman Chris Bishop told NZ media the “appalling scenes of intimidation, violence, misery and crime” exposed in the TV1 documentary illustrated the government’s “utter failure on housing.”

“Emergency housing is great for motel owners who have made millions but appalling for vulnerable people who need help and support as the example of Rotorua demonstrates,” he said.

National Party Leader Christopher Luxon has slammed Labour’s record on housing as an ‘abject failure. ’Images)

Alan Johnson, housing spokesman of the Child Poverty Action group, wrote recently that the Rotorua crisis was damning proof of the government’s lack of vision.

“Such short-sightedness borders on an ideological blindness with an unwillingness by Labour’s leadership to truly appreciate the extent of the role the state must play in order to address the housing crisis,” he wrote.

Pointing out that the 2022 budget allocated $130m over the next four years to provide transition housing support to 200 families in Rotorua, he added: “It apparently has never occurred to the government that it could just go out and build these houses”.

Despite the crisis threatening to spiral out of control, Ms Ardern continues to defend her government’s record, telling NZ media it was better to have families in motels than sleeping in cars.

“I would much rather people have temp housing that is not a garage, that is not a car,” she said, adding that under her premiership, more state housing had been built than previous governments.

“Ten per cent of all state houses in New Zealand have been built by this government,” she said. “We’ve built more houses than any government since the 1970s, but we need to build more.”

Commentators point out, however, that while this may be accurate, her government has demolished more homes than it has built, bringing the number of new homes provided to the needy to a net negative.

Bryce Edwards, director of the Democracy Project points out: “While 193 houses have been built so far this year, 202 houses have been demolished since January.

“Ardern will tell us that she is still aspirational about fixing homelessness, and will bristle at any notion that she hasn’t done enough. But it’s obvious to most people that she has simply put the problem in the ‘too hard basket’, unwilling to grapple with what it would take to genuinely deal with an urgent problem.”

He adds: “Brushing it under the carpet is not the same as fixing the problem”.