State housing - Why do we have it?

[The Stranger:Me]

Obviously it isn't a problem judging by the general tenor of posts.

I suppose I don't see the point really. I'd much rather the government put resources into developing affordable efficent housing for private ownership. There is something badly wrong with our house construction methods that the cost is so high. Admittedly that is currently a result of shoddy private housing design and the resulting tough new building requirements.

It simply seems a hurrer of a lot of houses.

I am generally opposed to the state owning a business and believe that it should stick to dealing with essentail services. However, I fail to see that the state owning so many houses is a great problem, the issue is more how they are managed, and this often becomes a political football.
One thing is for sure, I would be more concerned right now were they considering quitting large numbers of them in the current market.

As to the "shoddy private housing design and the resulting tough new building requirements" comment. I feel that this is a load of bullshit.

For 200yrs we haven't needed the new laws and houses have generally been stable and reasonably watertight. What happened to change all that?
Hmm, treating timber with arsenic and boron is not very environmentally friendly is it? Do we really need to treat timer at all? Well not according to the BIA we don't. Timber treatment is but one, various systems were approved for use by the BIA and tested and approved by BRANZ which quite frankly were stupid. You will note that these aren't private enterprises.

NOT saying there were no rough jobs done by builders, or that there is no blame to apportion to builders, however much of it rests with the govt in reality.

The laws are being enacted as an arse covering exercise only. The govt realised when they fucked up that they had to disband the BIA in a hurry and needed laws to push blame onto someone else in future.

[Hitcher]

P.S. I am currently doing some research into this topic hence why I have some info at my fingertips.

Good luck with that. I refer you to (in case you don't have it already) John Luxton's "yellow paper", written in the early 1990s when he was Minister of Housing. It is the only comprehensive and reasoned discussion of this matter ever undertaken by any government in New Zealand.

The current "state housing" model doesn't work. Building more rental properties is only part of a solution, and having those owned and operated by a state agency is a particularly clumsy and ponderous mechanism. So too is incentivising low-income people to live in Auckland.

[alanzs]

What frustrates me is the cost of building a house. It is far lower in Oz and the USA. There must be ways to make this efficent.

I don't know about OZ, but the fees on building a home in many states of the US are astronomical. Oh yeah, in California they have had water restricted shower heads for years and it's no big deal.

[Swoop]

Fuck, I didn't know she was Childless !

You cannot seriously imagine a male "going there", can you?

[Paul in NZ]

Pfft...

State houses exist so rich politicians can come from them and grim faced socialists can stand in front of them for photo ops...

Also - there is a LOT of brown carpet left over from the 70's and it has to go someplace...

Also also - they are cheap to buy - as my excellent daughter found out - good job - paid her own way through uni and at 23 they have purchased a run down state house as a do er upperer...