Housing as a human right: Those for and against

Monday, 2 August 2021

The Human Rights Commission has released a report which calls the Government’s treatment of the housing crisis a human rights calamity.

Chief Commissioner Paul Hunt said on Monday the housing crisis was an institutional failure.

“Housing is absolutely fundamental to the country’s health. Poor housing impoverishes people and it impoverishes our country. We have got to get this right,” he said.

The commission launched framework guidelines for a national inquiry into housing.

Stuff has asked those with a stake in the issue whether they are for or against reframing the housing debate around human rights.

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Property investor, Steve Goodey, says not all landlords are the evil enemy, and words like human rights can paint a wrong picture of the situation.

ACT leader and MP for Epsom, David Seymour:

“I haven’t read the report as I value my time on earth, and as a consequence I don’t read anything from the Human Rights Commission.

“The commissions report is a pointless way to approach the topic. There is no such thing as a right without a duty. If people have a right to housing, who has a duty to provide it? The question is how do we carry out that duty, and those problems are very well understood.

“It is land use planning, infrastructure funding, and the availability of quality assurance and materials. All of these have been very well canvassed in a wide-ranging debate over the past 10 years or more.

“What the human rights commission could possibly hope to add, I have no idea.”

Property investor coach Steve Goodey:

Renters United spokesman Ashok Jacob says the discussion about human rights helps to identify the problem, and the next step is moving forward.

“It’s all just words.

“The Government that we currently have decided that they like the stick more than they like the carrot. They are taking a beating to landlords to try and totally discourage one side of the market.

“Where is the positive incentives for property developers to build a thousand more houses next year? They haven’t made it easier to sub-divide land, they have just said: ‘Alright, investors stop buying houses’. That just does not fix anything.

“Using words like human rights can paint the wrong picture of the situation.

“If we decided as a country to say that clean, dry, efficient housing is a human right, is it then a human right to live in Auckland? Or is it a human right that if you want a Kainga Ora home you may have to move out of the main centres?

“Not all landlords are the evil enemy. Lots of landlords have set something up for their own retirement, and a lot of them care a lot about their tenants. I think it is bad form to get the big brush out and call all landlords evil. There is good and bad everywhere.

“Landlords do their bit, property developers are trying to build as many houses as possible. Maybe if the Government made things a little easier for them we could get this thing fixed.”

Renters United spokesman Ashok Jacob:

Sharon Cullwick, executive officer of the Property Investors Federation says housing is a human right and there is no reason why it should not be available to every New Zealander.

“The problem the Human Rights Commission has identified is that governments have treated housing purely as a market commodity since the 1980s.

“But housing is not like other market commodities because you can’t choose to not be in the housing market. It has been treated like an investment and the Government has encouraged that view.

“Now we are in a situation where housing, like many other forms of wealth, is concentrated in a very small number of people. But unlike other forms of wealth, everybody has to have a house.

“The Human Rights Commission has identified that the way we currently view housing does not align with the fact that human beings need a roof over their head.

“But the focus on it being a human right does not provide us with a pathway to get out of this mess. They have identified a problem without posing a solution.

“The solutions are all there because we have done it before. We need a massive state housing build, regulation and price control, and the state basically needs to be the main actor in the housing market. Not just building but in providing tenancy.

“For all the Government commitment to fairness and wellbeing, there seems to be a massive psychic block between what they say about their vision for New Zealand and how they act in Government.

“We have identified the problem, now moving forward is the next step.”

Property Investors Federatoin executive officer Sharon Cullwick:

“I knew that shelter was a human right, but I didn’t think that housing was. But I do think it is fair enough, housing is a human right.

“In this country there should be no reason why everyone shouldn’t have a house, or home they can call their own, whether that be through renting or ownership.

“A lot of things in the report the Government is already working on implementing such as the healthy homes standard, and upgrading tenancy rights. I am guessing that the Government will slowly work its way through the other suggestions.

“The best thing we can do is increase supply before we worry about tinkering with anything else. If you have more supply, the tenants have a choice, the rents will come down, we can remove our older stock from the market.

“If we can increase supply efficiently, without putting too many more rules and regulations on landlords then that will be the best possible solution.

“The private sector owns 85 per cent of the rental stock, but at the moment we aren’t being helped. We have got the houses, we just need to help people make them available.”