Radical new housing programme launched by Organise Aotearoa
Community-led socialist organisation, Organise Aotearoa,
has launched a radical new programme and set of demands to
improve the state of housing and eliminate homelessness in
New Zealand.
In its opening paragraph, the
programme states that rising rents take up massive portions
of ordinary people’s incomes, living conditions are
deteriorating, and housing-related illnesses have killed
1180 children between 2000 and 2015. Instead of providing
people with homes, the housing market provides uncertainty,
stress, illness, and exploitation.
The content of
the programme was informed by the attendees of two public
meetings, hosted in Auckland and Wellington in October last
year, where members of the public were invited to openly
discuss their immediate concerns about the housing crisis
and the rights of renters and mortgagees.
“We
want the community to inform our policy as much as
possible,” says Organise Aotearoa spokesperson Mikesh
Patel. “Our housing programme will be the first of many
documents analysing the state of inequality and deprivation
in Aotearoa, and proposing a plan to the community on how we
can change that.”
According to Patel, the work of
existing housing organisations also informed the programme.
“Across the country, people are fighting against
gentrification, advocating for renters rights, and opposing
unjust housing developments on stolen Māori
land.”
Organise Aotearoa has so far held public
meetings in Dunedin, Wellington, Rotorua, Hamilton, and
Auckland on work and welfare, the justice system, the
environment, and New Zealand’s relationship to the rest of
the world. Its next series of meetings will focus on
decolonisation and constitutional
transformation.
“These struggles have informed
our kaupapa. They are all connected under the capitalist
system that was brought to Aotearoa by the British Empire -
a system that we must move beyond if we’re to ensure the
wellbeing of all people.”
The housing programme
was published on Organise Aotearoa’s website
following the one year anniversary of the organisation’s
public
launch.
ENDS