Democrats for social credit
Website: www.democrats.org.nz

Media Release

Monday 24 June 2013

How to solve the housing problem

“Housing is a hot topic,” says Democrats for Social Credit (DSC) Housing spokesman Katherine Ransom. “Parties in Parliament are groping for viable policy, and even National has a tinker-with-the-bits plan – to benefit property speculators. No surprises there.

“Home ownership is part of our history. Soldiers and colonists made the long voyage to New Zealand for that famous quarter acre stolen from the Maori. The prosperity in the latter half of last century was partly due to general home ownership. It is still a dream for many today.”

The selling of state assets, plus speculators’ poor quality ‘leaky homes’, has created a drop in low cost housing stock. Ransom explains that low income families don’t live in ‘the housing market’ or ‘investments’, they live in substandard, overcrowded dwellings.

“DSC has the only solution,” says Ransom. “The state houses that formed the backbone of our once-healthy economy were built with Reserve Bank credit. Not private funding, not speculators, not crippling mortgages from commercial banks, but money created interest-free for the public good by our own Reserve Bank.

“Michael Joseph Savage’s visionary policy provided work during the Great Depression, homes for the homeless, and an asset base that not only pulled New Zealand out of the Depression but stabilised and enriched communities for half a century.”

DSC calls for a return to this vision. Ransom says neo-liberal reforms turned New Zealand into a virtual clone of the England that colonists left behind: an economically stagnant country with a handful of landowners, a shrinking middle class and a majority of low wage tenants and indebted servants.

“The Great Depression has echoes today too,” Ransom adds. “The media may call it a ‘recession’, but the gap between rich and poor widens every day. More and more families live without adequate shelter, we have massive unemployment, and the general health is declining.

“DSC urgently calls for our publicly owned bank to do more than fiddle with interest rates or deposit percentages. The Minister of Finance can instruct the Reserve Bank to create the money needed for new, well-built, low cost housing. He only needs the courage.”

To support this essential economic policy, Ransom would add a financial transactions tax to discourage speculators, establish a universal basic income, and attract first home buyers and low-income families with 1% mortgages and rent-to-buy schemes. “Our ‘housing problem’ will be sorted.

“Reserve Bank credit can create an asset-rich bedrock for prosperity lasting another 50 years.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media