M.P. attacks Govt’s C.H.I.P. programme

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 22

M.P. attacks Govt’s C.H.I.P. programme

PA Auckland Only the speculator will benefit from the Government’s Community Housing Improvement Programme, according to the Labour member of Parliament for Auckland Central, Mr R. W. Prebble.

New housing was so expensive that few people could afford it, he told a housing seminar. The' ordinary wage and salary earner could sot afford either a new home or to buy an existing one, he said. ~ The more wealthy could not afford to buy a new home but could, thanks to Housing Corporation loans on existing homes, afford to buy an existing one. This had resulted in a huge sale of rental, housing to the above-average income earners, Mr Prebble said. At the same time, those who were occupying the rental accommodation had been evicted.

In many cases a house which might have been sub-divided into two flats and so provided accommodation for four adults and maybe four children, had been sold to a childless single family who had converted it into a single home.

“So the utilisation of housing stock is under the Government’s housing policies actually dropping,” Mr Prebble said.

The so-called “C.H.J.P.’programme is going to dramatically increase this trend. ' . “The Government is about to lend money to property speculators to buy up cheaply existing housing regardless of whether it is rental accommodation or not, evict the present tenants, convert the houses, into desirable single family te-

nancies and sell them with Government finance to new people from outside the area for a large profit. “Only the speculator will benefit from this policy,” Mr Prebble said. He said the Housing Corporation should announce that loans for buying rental accommodation would in future only be made available when the tenant wanted to buy. “If savings banks followed a smiliar policy, this would reduce the number of rental houses being lost to the rental pool and tenants being evicted.”

Second, the “C.H.1.P.” programme should be completely revised so that the speculators were removed from the scheme and the corporation itself should go into areas that

needed reviving with offers to the tenants and owner-occupiers to enable them to buy the homes and develop them. “This policy worked overseas,” Mr Prebble said.

Third, the Housing Corporation should accept a duty to provide accommodation to those who were homeless and there should be a clear statement of housing priorities starting with the need to house children and those who were under economic and social threats such as battered wives. “I do not believe that this would be necessarily much more expensive than the present policy as the Government is at the moment actually financing a housing boom,” Mr Prebble said.