Vol. 76/No. 2      January 16, 2012

“They want to move us like cattle,” Moana Okotai told the Militant at the house she has lived in for 16 years. “They are pushing out Maori, Pacific Islanders and other people who can’t afford to buy houses.”

The properties are owned by Housing New Zealand, a government-owned corporation that provides reduced-rent housing to people who meet the government’s means-testing requirements.

HNZ plans to build at least 260 new houses on the properties. The company will maintain ownership of 78 houses; 39 will go to community housing providers charging higher rents; and the other 140 or so are to be sold at market value. While the corporation says it will rehouse evicted tenants, it will not say where it will put them.

The properties are in areas bordering some of Auckland’s most expensive suburbs and many of them have sea views. It is estimated each house could sell for NZ$500,000 (US$393,170) at minimum.

“They’re trying to say that people with no money are not entitled to sit on million dollar properties,” retired garment worker Moepai Temata told the Militant at a protest march through central Auckland Dec. 10. She, her husband Michael, and successive generations of children have been in their house for 47 years. “We were never given limits on how long we could stay,” Temata said.

State housing was a social gain won in the late 1930s as a by-product of struggles by working people in the face of depression conditions. Thousands of houses were built, with the stated aim of providing quality houses for workers, for a lifetime, at rents lower than the market demands.

Since the 1990s successive governments have whittled away at state housing. In July new restrictions were introduced, including regular reviews of new tenants’ “eligibility.”

Raewynne Hita, a 61-year-old welfare beneficiary who attended a Nov. 19 protest at the Glen Innes shopping center, has lived in Glen Innes since 1960. The whole area, including the houses and community facilities, were built by working people, she said, many of whom lived in Glen Innes. “We’ve developed this community, not the powers that be.”

“We’re people that will never own our own homes,” said Hita. “But we should be able to have nice houses, a roof over our head, food on the table, and good health—we’re not asking for the moon.”
 
 
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