Speech 2016

Housing Crisis                                                              -Forrest

Have you ever looked around you and seen houses really overpriced but you can’t afford it, even though it’s your dream house and you love it. Well this is the case for most New Zealanders. Over the last decade housing prices rose to crisis levels, and it's nothing to be proud about either.

In this written dispute I will write about what I think of this housing dilemma. The choice is with us and our government. Will New Zealand house prices rise or fall? The ball is in our court, but what will we do with it.

I think New Zealanders should come first when it comes to housing. At the moment it is estimated 42,000 people are homeless in our country. This is due to rising house prices and job shortages.

The reason why housing is so expensive in New Zealand is because the country has a housing bubble. A housing bubble is a run-up in housing prices fuelled by demand, speculation and quality. Housing bubbles usually start with an increase in demand, in the face of limited supply which takes a relatively long period of time to replenish and increase. Speculators enter the market, further driving demand. So I demand that investors from overseas should be a lot more restricted when buying a house then a New Zealander.  

New Zealand's housing crisis isn’t just caused by it's also the lack houses being built in the country. New Zealand has a total immigration of 55,000 each year and 80 per cent move to Auckland, and assuming there are 4 people per house it means the government needs to build 11,000 each year! And If Auckland needs 11,000 houses per year just for immigration and New Zealand is only building 7,500 we’re 3,500 houses short. And  If Auckland has been building 3,500 houses less than what people are wanting each year for 10 years that means Auckland is 35,000 homes short of the average, this leads to today's crisis and how some of it started

The housing crisis is now affecting more than 98 per cent of New Zealand! Head of the labour party Andrew Little says “Housing pressures have seen house prices rise faster than wages in all areas of the country except the Grey District, Masterton, Westland and Wairoa. The four areas make up 1.25 per cent of our population”. “The housing crisis is making life tougher for a lot of New Zealanders. Skyrocketing house prices are locking a generation out of the Kiwi dream of home ownership and pushing rents up so high, families are being forced to live in cars and garages”.

I believe as responsible people you must realise that we need to focus in maintaining and building proper homes, Not just for us but for future generations and the people living out on the streets. It's our country and we need to nurture it. Like how it's been nurturing us for the last 700 years

My Speech about New Zealand's Housing Crisis