State houses are for living in, not selling off

Today’s meeting to try to sell more than 364 state houses is an appalling decision by the Government given the current housing crisis, says Glenn Barclay, national secretary of the Public Service Association.

"People across the country are crying out for suitable housing, and the last thing the Government should be doing is trying to reduce their responsibility to provide social housing," Glenn Barclay says.

"The Government’s desperate ideological push to privatise social housing will do nothing to put a warm, dry roof over the heads of the thousands of New Zealanders stuck without a home.

"Social housing needs to be rapidly scaled up to meet people’s needs, particularly in Auckland.

"The Government needs to invest in state houses and Housing NZ as their provider, not push more work onto strained and underfunded community housing providers.

"Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett needs to stop trying to privatise state housing, and get on with making sure that people aren’t forced to live out of their cars.

"This crisis is too severe for ideologically-driven decisions that will fail to provide safe, warm homes," said Mr Barclay.

ENDS

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