Labour urges state of emergency on housing
Labour's housing spokesman Phil Twyford wants the Government to declare a state of emergency to deal with housing issues.
Mr Twyford said research from Otago University suggests 41,000 New Zealanders are homeless. That includes people living in campgrounds and families living in a single room in a shared house.
The Government must address the social crisis, he says.
"What they should do is declare a state of emergency," he told TVNZ's Q&A program on Sunday.
Labour MP and mayoral candidate Phil Goff agreed that the Government needs take a tough stance, and is calling for immigration numbers to be slowed until Auckland's infrastructure and transport can cope with population growth.
"Immigration is good for New Zealand - it brings skills and energy - but it needs to be at a rate transport and housing infrastructure can cope with," Goff said at the official launch of his campaign for the Auckland mayoralty at Corban Estate in west Auckland today.
RELATED NEWS:
'It's just ridiculous': Labour says as new data shows Auckland's affordable homes 'disappearing'
Housing crisis: One third of Aucklanders have considered leaving
Labour condemns state house sell-off
'Just build some bloody houses': Labour leader Andrew Little
Is the Auckland housing market slowing down?
The mayoral candidate said Auckland's population was increasing by a record 825 people a week, with two thirds being new migrants.
He had no set figure in mind for a new limit on immigrants, saying it was not sensible to have a number.
But said numbers can be reduced "by slowing the issuing of temporary work visas currently running at over 209,000 a year or by lifting the threshold for permanent residency".
Goff said foreign property investors should be building houses and adding to the economy, rather than buying and driving up the price of houses.
The Auckland Council would need to work with Government, private businesses and non-government organisations to solve the housing issues, Goff said.
If he was mayor he would launch a review of the current consent process so that in can be "faster, cheaper and in line with best practice".
Meanwhile, aspiring politician and former television celebrity Tamati Coffey wrote in the Rotorua Post on Saturday that homelessness is a topic that continues to plague the government.
"Our homelessness crisis is real and it's happening in most of our big cities, including Rotorua.
"Non-New Zealand residents are buying up our houses and house sales going up with home ownership going down."
A generation of young New Zealanders are struggling to get onto the property ladder and have by default, become part of "generation rent", he says.
Mr Twyford says many solutions are being mooted.
"Someone's proposed the old Mt Eden Prison be used. Someone else suggested a cruise ship. Paul Bennett's talking about pod housing. Look, my message to the government is I don't care how you do it; just do it."
RELATED:
