Stats NZ has confirmed that higher rent prices were the biggest contributor to the annual inflation rate. Almost a fifth of the 2.2 per cent annual increase in the CPI was due to rent prices.
“Housing is a human right, but this Government is treating it like a game of Monopoly,” says the Green Party’s Housing spokesperson, Tamatha Paul.
“Everyone deserves a warm and affordable place to call home. We have everything we need to make this happen. All we need to do is start treating housing as the public good it really is instead of exploiting it for profit.
“Successive governments have turned housing into a business venture, locking people out from having a home while a privileged few benefit at the expense of everybody else.
“The current landlord Government has only inflamed the situation by handing landlords $2.9 billion in tax cuts while punching down on renters with no cause evictions and allowing rents to spiral out of control.
“The current system is forcing people into making the impossible choice of either buying essentials like food or paying rent.
“The Government is entrenching the imbalance between tenant and landlord to the point where people are too afraid to ask for leaks to be fixed or smoke alarms to be replaced out of fear of being kicked out of their home.
“We deserve better than this. We need rent controls which will limit the amount that landlords can increase rent and how often they can do this. We also need a Rental Warrant of Fitness to ensure quality, and for the Government to commit to building more public housing to make sure that our most marginalised and vulnerable can also have affordable, secure homes.
“Everyone deserves to live in a warm and healthy home,” says Tamatha Paul.
