MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2018
Frontline social housing worker Bernie Smith will look at how to restore secure housing for all New Zealanders in the
Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture hosted by Faculty of Arts on October 23.
Smith, the chief executive of Māngere-based Monte Cecilia Housing Trust, will argue that the Labour-led government is
not doing enough to meet the housing needs of low-income families, and seems to be putting all its efforts into
KiwiBuild houses that will cost up to $650,000 each.
“Why does the government believe it can solve the housing crisis by itself using the KiwiBuild programme, instead of
proactively and creatively working with community housing providers to reduce the increasing gap between homelessness
and home ownership?
“The government position is creating further poverty and a greater sense of hopelessness among New Zealand families, who
only seek a warm, dry, affordable, long-term, sustainable rental home in which to raise their children.”
With over 40 years in social services in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Australia, Smith has extensive experience of
child protection and foster care, disabilities, seniors and now homelessness and poverty. On returning to New Zealand in
2016, he was shocked to find that in South Auckland there were 100,000 people living in overcrowded and substandard
housing, and appalled to see his own people living in garages, parks, cars and lodges.
Politics Senior Lecturer Dr Geoff Kemp, who is on the Bruce Jesson Trust and is an organiser of the University-sponsored
lecture, says that given the scale of the housing crisis “we need to engage with new and diverse thinking.
“The housing crisis is a critical issue for New Zealand and needs continuing critical debate – no-one has all the
answers. With his frontline experience, Bernie Smith is someone who’ll talk from the heart and shoot from the hip.”
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