<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>0:05 oh absolutely an impossibility for low income families i mean er <.>th <.>y there's no way in the world that they can save the deposit gap we've er lost schemes such as home start and um <.>y you just can't get that deposit together now even if they could meet the er <.>r repayments and that's highly unlikely even with er interest rates coming down so er what has been the dream for many new zealanders of owning their own home is er fast fading and er increasingly people will be reliant lower income people will be reliant on the rental market now that's at a time when in fact er the state housing rental market is looking very shaky three oh nine three oh double nine the telephone number callum good morning <,> you there callum <,> okay flag you mate er <&>1:00 voc <,> oh is he right three is callum er yes good morning tim good morning major er i'd like to compliment you on what you are saying now the experience <,> i can muster up is that my nephew at the age of about forty five is just qualified through a theological school and will get his er bachelor of divinity next year now the other friend is the er legal representative for the anglican diocese of new zealand and also chancellor of the canterbury er cathedral <&>pronounced cathredral and those two people before well the er chancellor is <&>2:00 still in the legal business and he sees what's going on and my nephew he as a part of his training was er er prison visiting and er doing all sorts of er theological work before he qualified and you are exactly correct in what you say and my theory is that the prime minister does just does not want to know about this it's a fact but he just doesn't want to know about it yes and neither does his <.>c his er cabinet or caucus well well thank you callum <.>i it's er it certainly is concerning when you're looking at er some of what is happening to low income vulnerable new zealanders i believe that a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable member and er when you lay that yardstick against er new zealand society at the present then er there's got to be a lot of <&>3:00 questions about the policies that we're actually following three oh nine three oh double nine it's er coming up to a quarter to eleven er <&>3:10 <&>one minute forty seconds of advertisements not transcribed <&>4:50 one on one around new zealand my name is tim bickerstaff our guest in the studio this morning is major campbell roberts we're <.>l of the salvation army looking at the crisis that is occurring in new zealand er as far as housing is concerned is it going to get worse <&>5:00 tut i believe it is going to get worse unfortunately because er <.>th the policy that <.>s we're following just cannot er house people substantially and er it will for low income new zealanders get worse well tell me this um er how do we compare new zealand with other say developed word countries well you see this is the tragedy we have been <,> very comparable i mean voc our housing has been much better than most other countries in the world people have been well housed in new zealand we don't have the situations of the new yorks of people er living on the streets in cardboard boxes for the whole of their lives um we don't have those problems and we haven't had those problems in in new zealand but what we are now introducing is a policy which those countries have been following um and which has ended up in massive levels of homelessness now that's that's the worry that er what we have <&>6:00 known as a good situation in terms of being well housed in new zealand is on the change three oh nine three oh double nine the telephone number jo good morning good morning tim and major roberts <{><[>um <[>hello jo yes um major roberts has given a very accurate account of what's happening and it's obvious this government has embarked on a scheme to rid the state houses of tenants and by that i mean um people already residing in housing corp homes can barely meet the costs of the increases in rents as it is and the needy people who have been on the waiting lists cannot meet the expenses to move into a house now it would really be between eight hundred and a thousand dollars just to er move in and this consists of rent in advance and a bond and if you're living somewhere else expenses for <&>7:00 shifting plus if you have a telephone and not many have these days and power er there's a bond required for that also and the people um er you know just cannot afford to move into them and some of the empty houses have been er filling up but they are filling up with people who er have money and can afford it we're seeing a different type of tenant whereas before like campbell was saying um it was done on a point system where the very neediest people with the biggest need got the the um housing and i feel that these policies also do split the um er people like that earlier caller <&>8:00 you know people are looking at er why aren't i getting this but you know you do have to give these er things to the very desperate and at the moment the very desperate are not receiving um er the assistance that they used to and next july when the landlords get the word of the housing situation will be even more er diabolical than it is already and the the the government have listed er state houses with the land agents and they're selling off blocks of state houses as urgent government surplus sales and i think this is absolutely unacceptable and on the other side of the coin er the spin off from poor housing will be poor health we're seeing things that haven't been here since the nineteen thirties like um <{><[>word <[>that's basically <&>9:00 what er what you're saying major campbell wasn't it mm <{><[>tut that's right and er you know <.>th there is going to be these changes you're quite right jo in terms of for people who are on those low incomes <[>yeah three oh nine three oh double nine er neil good morning good morning major <{><[>word <[>hello neil i'm in the position i can actually raise deposit on my on my <,> housing unit right and i actually wrote to the housing corporation and asked them what they wanted for a place and he said about seventy thousand and they wanted ten percent which i which i could raise by my relatives yes then i found out if i took out i can't take out a mortgage because my repayments must exceed a third of my income i'm only on the pension right <{><[>right <[>so my income would then be round about roughly fifty eight dollars i should imagine and so i can't i can't do that i can't get my house but they've quite cheerfully under this new scheme put my rent up to ninety five dollars right yes the new scheme now there's another <&>10:00 alternative i could actually move a friend in i've got enough room to move a friend in but if i move in a friend in coughs my living alone allowance gets cut and i also probably come off a single pension i get classified as married or if i take some um flatmates in <.>o of the same sex i'm i'm <.>th then classified as as income an income tax can can get me so whatever way i turn i'm in a minefield i can't escape from yeah i feel very sorry for you neil in that situation and i think that that's the you you actually illustrate what is true for a lot of people that that's the sort of situation they're trying to actually help themselves as you are trying to er er purchase your own place but it's it's just not possible is it word all right thanks very much for your call er neil right thank you we'll take a break three oh nine three oh double nine to talk with major campbell roberts <&>10:55 <&>one minute forty seconds of advertisements not transcribed <&>12:35 a decent housing policy which actually as <.>w i think most new zealanders don't want people to be badly housed in new zealand there's no way that we want to um move into the situations of overseas cities think most new zealanders and one of the things that er that <.>a that always encourages me is that wherever you talk to people people at all spectrums of new zealand society DO want people well housed they are <&>13:00 proud of the state housing system and er i think that's what we want from the government we want them to deliver on a housing policy which will enable people to live in dignity and um will make sure that er particularly vulnerable women and children um get well cared for and that that safety net is there and that's what state housing has done tut robert good morning good morning morning robert <.>i i'd er i'd like to comment on er mister roberts um i suppose description <.>o of the current housing policy er i'm the coordinator of the wellington housing trust er we've been providing er housing assistance to low income people for about ten years and the thing i'd like to to talk about a bit is er i think the the dilution of responsibility er in government departments in handling housing er formerly the housing corporation seemed to have be responsible for housing people um now it's it's <&>14:00 been devolved into three different organisations the housing ministry housing new zealand and the community funding agency um <.>a and as such er organisations like ours find it very difficult to actually get support and to continue support for providing housing to low income people and i think this this is an effect that that's being felt er very strongly in the community in terms of actually getting support for continuing er housing needs or adjusting the housing needs and er further to that that organisations like ours are being forced to reduce or even eliminate housing services as as a result of er reduced government services and and the difficulty of actually engendering more robert you'd be er er housing er people on low incomes and sort of vulnerable families that's right um we we also have um we also cater to people who are not strictly in the government guidelines for example ex prisoners er used to be handled by the <.>gover er by <&>15:00 department of justice er those funds have been slashed considerably um street kids and just people ex psychiatric patients often that aren't keyed in to normal government services we handle people like that and because it's generic there's no specific contract that we can have with places like the community funding agencies and we're concerned that these people are being left and marginalised right so there's nowhere really for you to go now is there because each of those housing agencies has a specific responsibility we've been trying for a year now er to try some sort of contracted service with the government without any success er as of july first er all <.>o all of our subsidies that we've been <.>redu receiving from the housing corporation will vanish right er and and there is no no extra provisions for you in that situation not that we've been able to discover so but i i i appreciate er campbell's er i guess description and and bringing bringing the the <&>16:00 housing er situation to to the public to er to the radio audience i think it's very valuable that it that it be kept up and i i suppose if there's a question i have to campbell it's <.>w what can we do to make the government listen there's been very little er there's been very little notice of community input into the policies er we we make submissions to the housing restructuring bill and they're viewed by er backbenchers who have very little to do with the writing of of the housing bill itself and in fact we find that it er <.>th er there have been at least a hundred and fifty submissions that i know of from community agencies and i saw absolutely <.>no nothing reflected er in the rewriting of the housing bill that was finally passed tut yeah i think that's incredibly discouraging that er there has been a lot of voices in terms of <.>th that questioning this policy and er in fact no notice has been taken of that at all i think all we can do is keep putting the pressure on i think certainly as it comes up to elections next year um we need to be asking all politicians for a very clear er definitions of what their housing policies are because i believe it's at the KEY of the delivery <&>pronounced livery of er a just and equal er social situation in new zealand <&>17:17