Kelvin Davis
MP for Te Tai Tokerau
Maori Development spokesperson

MEDIA STATEMENT

3 October 2016

Māori Party all hui no-doey on housing

The Māori Party should stop tinkering and start fixing tragic Māori housing statistics in the face of a national housing crisis, says Labour’s Māori Development spokesman Kelvin Davis.

“The Maori Party is touting the success of the Maori Housing Network, which is blowing $18 million a year just talking about houses instead of building them.

“Instead of delivering houses, this money has been spent on 32 ‘capability projects’, 42 workshops and ‘housing facilitation support’ for just 79 whanau. With the money left over, they’ve only been able to build 42 houses.

“That’s a lot of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo and not much in the way of housing for needy whanau.

“A year out from the election both co-leaders are busy distancing themselves from National’s disastrous housing crisis that has seen Māori home ownership drop to half the Pakeha rate.

“Marama Fox has already distanced herself from the housing crisis by calling National ‘slumlords’ even though the Māori Party prop them up through a confidence and supply agreement.

“This comes on the back of the failure of the Māori Party’s Kainga Whenua loan scheme, which granted just five loans in a year, and the Māori Party’s disastrous backing of National’s state houses sell-off at a time when thousands of Maori children are living in cars and garages.

“Given Maori are five times more likely to be homeless than Pakeha, it’s time the Māori Party stopped propping up this Government and started providing proper solutions to the housing crisis.

“Labour would fix the housing crisis by creating 5000 new emergency housing places, stopping the state house sell-off and building an additional 1000 every year, cracking down on speculators and building 100,000 new affordable homes for first home buyers,” says Kelvin Davis.

ends

© Scoop Media