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OPINION: It’s a classic parenting trope: mark your child’s height on the wall, with a date next to it. Build a timeline of their growth: the rapid shoots, the gradual change that you don’t notice until it’s time to put another line on the wall, and say, “Wow, look how you’ve grown!”
I’ve heard of it. I’ve seen it in movies. But I don’t have a growth chart for myself or my son.
At the top of my head, I make twenty. Twenty houses that I have lived in during my 34 years.
Seven as a kid, and that doesn’t include the moments in between staying with friends and family, or living in a small motorhome while we waited for a home to be available. Three as an adult before having a son and ten since I had my son.
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Ten houses my son has moved into and left without a mark. There was a house where we were allowed to mark a growth chart on the walls, my son’s name and height were joined by the owners’ children, who had lived in the house before I rented it. Two brands, six months apart. That’s it. Then we had to leave.
I lived in an apartment above the fish and chip shop in Aro Valley when I was a baby before my parents got divorced; in a suburban house in Upper Hutt where my younger brother’s placenta is buried under a plum tree; in a house in England (this was my favorite); in a commune with solar energy and a greenhouse bath in rural Motueka; and in a little refurbished shed with a long drop and mice on the walls (my least favorite). And that was when I was 13 years old.
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Charlotte Fielding, pictured with her 11-year-old son and dog, doesn’t have much hope for change from the government’s housing policy announcement.
It would take too long to list the places I’ve lived since. I am ashamed and saddened by all the houses my son has lived in, all the neighborhoods to which we have not belonged.
The idea of living in the same house throughout your childhood seems like an unattainable dream. Like the idea of having some privacy and autonomy over the house I live in, and for which I pay substantial amounts of money.
For a long time, my income was too low to think about buying a house. You should now be eligible for the first home loan plan – I have a small deposit and a reasonable income.
However, two mortgage brokers have told me that I would realistically need at least the 10 percent deposit, not the 5 percent that the scheme requires, and that even if I can raise enough for a mortgage, I am discounted. from the local market.
As an anecdote, I heard from dozens, even hundreds of people who attended a home visit. I can’t compete with that. Increasing the maximum price may help a bit, but the dream of owning a home is further away than ever. I have friends who are associated and have two incomes, but they are also struggling to get their first home.
The Government’s housing policy announcement this morning is welcome but disappointing. I’m not a policy expert, but I don’t see that that makes a big difference in my life or in people like me.
Neither the rental market nor the first home market is tilted in favor of those of us who live single or low-income, as much as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern keeps saying that is what the Government is aiming for.
What else can be done? There are many experts who are crying out for the government to listen to their solutions to solve the housing crisis. For too long we have lacked a government bold enough to implement those solutions, and we risk enraging the landed gentry.
The strategies announced today do not go far enough to address skyrocketing home prices and utter inaccessibility to first-time home buyers, and they will not improve the precarious nature of the rental system. Investors’ assertion that rental prices will be forced to rise is something that tenants like myself are resigned to as inevitable.
Judith Collins says Jacinda Ardern has broken a promise by introducing a ‘capital gains tax’ after the government announced a series of housing policy changes.
I hope that by the time my child is an adult, these measures will have some significant results, but who knows how many houses we will have lived in by then or how much time we will spend on the bus that we are about to move. in.
Since I wrote about our bus in Things, my owners have asked me to move it out of the driveway and have stated that they will conduct more frequent inspections. Power dynamics in landlord-tenant relationships are skewed and make vulnerable people more vulnerable in ways that should not be accepted the way they are.
The most promising parts of the announcement, as far as I can tell, are the measures that encourage new construction by property investors and support for city councils with infrastructure.
More houses, please. Build them, build them, build them small.
All New Zealanders should be housed. No one should be sleeping in cars, nor terrified and vulnerable like many.
