ZB ZB
Live now
Start time
Playing for
End time
Listen live
Listen to NAME OF STATION
Up next
Listen live on
ZB

Mike Hosking: What's happening in our social housing is the real issue

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 22 Mar 2021, 4:28PM
(Photo / Getty)

Mike Hosking: What's happening in our social housing is the real issue

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 22 Mar 2021, 4:28PM

The critical part that was missed last week when Nicola Willis so correctly spoke out about the safety or not of Wellington was not the bit about social housing and where it’s located.

In many respects, where social housing is doesn’t matter. It’s what happens in the social housing.

The fact you need so much social housing is the great question.

Why? If the answer is hard times through no fault of your own, you’re dealing with the traditional social welfare type issue. A hand up, not a hand out.

But why is social housing now out of control? Why is the queue at record levels and growing? Why are the houses being built nowhere near the level they need to be.

Why are we paying millions in motel bills, and more importantly, why are those motel bills so high, and are motels charging a premium to be in the social housing game?

The clue came last week in a police raid of a Wellington social house – ironically, the day after Willis spoke out.

The Police found meth and cannabis. Why was meth and cannabis at a social housing unit? Because too many people in these units aren’t in hard times because of bad luck, they are there because of their actions, their attitude, and a government’s lack of desire to hold any one to account.

The violence issue Willis talks of is not the result of poor unemployed people down on their luck. It’s the result of drug addicts, of gang members, of peddlers of illegal activity, basically being bad buggers who know they can get away with it.

The reason the rooms in motels are charged out at the rate they are because there is a premium to deal with the violence and recalcitrance that’s comes with too many of the people in involved.

Not everyone obviously, but too many.

Too many of us have now seen it with our own eyes. Too many shopping precincts are sick of it, too many retailers don’t know what to do about it.

This tragically for too many is a crime issue, not a social issue. Too many of these people are not interested in being better or working harder.

They’re in crime and thuggery and intimidation and they couldn’t care less and they have no intention of changing.

We pay the bill while the government pretends it’s not happening and looks the other way.

When do you think reality strikes, or are we so far down the socialist path now that it is never any ones fault, no one can possibly take responsibility, and the best we can do is keep shelling it the money we don’t have.

Take your Radio, Podcasts and Music with you