Kia ora!
My name is Robbie and I'm another white man behind a desk and we are live at
BATS Theatre in Wellington!
Yes!
That's right, it's BATS theatre in Wellington, with an audience so left wing, it's more red
and green than fucking Christmas.
Today, we're talking about renting.
That annoying part of life that you just have to put up with for a few years in your twenties,
while you're a student.
And also when you're in your thirties and you work full time, and also your forties,
your fifties, your sixties, and on and on until you die.
Because you're never going to buy a house.
Now, before I move on, I can tell that some of you don't think that I'm
talking to you specifically.
So I'll say it again: if you are my age, give or take a few years, then you will not
buy a house, at any point in this country, at any point in your life, okay?
Banks have told you that you will, because they want your money, and political parties
have told you that you will, because they want you to vote for them, but unfortunately,
they're full of shit.
You will not buy a house.
Do you have any idea how expensive houses are?
And do you have any idea how little money you have?
According to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, if you're earning an average
wage and you want to save up for a deposit on a lower-quartile house in Auckland, on
your own, it could take you up to thirty-two years.
That's right, thirty-two years of saying "I'll get the next round," and then immediately leaving,
just to save enough money to start a mortgage.
And then you have to pay off that mortgage, at a rate of seven hundred dollars a week.
I can count on my hand the number of times I've spent seven hundred dollars in one
go, and now you have to pay that every week for thirty years.
Even if your parents own a house, and you've managed to kill off all of your siblings, that might --
someone has --
that might still not be enough, because your parents' house is probably earmarked to fund their
retirement.
The money they get for it isn't going to you so you can buy your own home — it's
going to a Norwegian cruise company, so your parents can visit the fjords and participate
in traditional Viking group sex rituals.
And, I know it's upsetting to think about your mum and your dad, rolling around in a
room full of naked scandinavians, all just going to town on each other and refusing to give
you a deposit for a house.
But that's just how it is.
The only way you'll ever be able to buy a house is if we all work really hard, right
now, to fix the economy.
And then your kids lend you some money to buy a house.
Because, for millenials, and I cannot stress this enough, it is too late.
So get used to your new future: collecting your super on Tuesday, going down the road
to sink some crafties with your mates on Wednesday, and on Thursday, getting your grandkids to
help you tidy the place up before your property manager Tracey comes round for a flat inspection.
And for that future to be even marginally bearable, some really big changes are needed.
Because our tenancy policy wasn't that great in the first place, and now that more and
more people are renting for longer and longer, the flaws in our policy are becoming painfully
clear.
A single bathroom in a four bedroom flat was bad enough, but now imagine that every room
has a couple in it, and all eight people have the bladder control of an eighty year old,
because guess what: you're all poor and eighty years old and still flatting because
you will never buy a house.
So!
What does the government have to offer us millennials who'll be renting forever?
Well, a housing warrant of fitness that sets standards for warmth and dryness is a good
starting point.
In 2009, the National government introduced a funding programme called "Warm Up New
Zealand: Heat Smart", (I do not know where the emphasis goes in that), and a University of Otago
study tracking the programme found that people who had their houses properly insulated had
lower rates of hospitalisation and mortality.
That's right, when the government helped landlords insulate their houses, the people
who lived in them died less, and the government saved nearly a billion dollars in health costs,
which means that shitty flats are costing taxpayers.
But we can't just set standards for rentals, we also need to take the burden of enforcing
those standards off tenants.
Because currently, if a landlord doesn't fix a problem, it's up to renters, who might
be single mothers working two jobs, to take it to the tenancy tribunal, and single-handedly
fight for justice, like Russell Crowe in Gladiator.
But at least Russell Crowe didn't have to feed a family at the same time!
They'd all luckily been killed by the Romans, so stroke of luck there.
And the potential stress of facing the tenancy tribunal has a massive chilling effect, so
lots of people just put up with unhealthy properties, which is stressful, or they move
out—which is also extremely stressful.
Not to mention that at any point in this process, your landlord can serve you with a no-reason eviction
with ninety days notice, and replace you with someone who doesn't complain.
All this policy isn't evil, it's just crap.
Because it's based on the idea that renting is just a phase.
But for our generation, renting is a lifelong reality.
We need clear, strict standards for rentals, and an auditing authority that can hold people
to those standards, and advocate on behalf of tenants.
Imagine how nice it would be if you didn't have to fight to stop your house from killing
you, but what if it turns out we should expect from our homes than simply refraining from
murder?
What if, for example, after you paid rent each week, you still had enough money to feed
your children, go on car-trip-based holidays, or, every so often, treat
yourself to a fancy bottle of wine? As long as it's, obviously, still under fifteen
dollars.
Obviously right now, those goals are just the fanciful pipe dreams of the wealthy elite.
For the June 2017 year, about one in five renting households spent forty percent or
more of their household income on rent and other housing costs, and it gets way worse
if you're old, because superannuation is only enough to live on if you already own
a house.
After tax, an old person living on their own currently gets $400.87
of super a week.
And according to TradeMe's Rental Price Index, the national median rent for a small
house is $390 per week — which means that that old person
is giving ninety-seven percent of their super directly to their landlord.
It also means they have to fund the rest of their week on ten dollars, which is less than
the price of a single ticket to a slightly racist Judi Dench film, and my grandparents
need those.
If we're going to be renting forever, we need to have enough money left over each week
to pay for a vaguely pleasant life, which means we have to increase incomes.
And we know how to do that. We up the minimum wage, increase human capital, strengthen unions,
while boosting worker mobility and sustaining labor demand, yadda yadda yadda, easy-peasy
lemon squeezey.
The real trick is to make sure that rents don't go up at the same rate as incomes.
And because rent controls have an annoying tendency of actually making things worse for
most people, the only real way to stabilise rents is to increase the supply of housing.
But be warned, everyone, okay? To talk about increasing housing
supply in cities is to utter the incredibly-obvious-idea-that-shall-not-be-named:
density. Okay?
Now, "people who live in leafy Auckland suburbs"—or "rich whites"—they don't like the idea
of higher density housing, and to be fair, higher density housing might increase their
chances of living next to normal people, which I know they find upsetting.
These NIMBYs have visions of towering concrete slums sprouting up in the beautiful, charming
neighbourhoods that they worked so hard to price poor people out of.
But as it turns out, people who are pushing for higher density housing also don't want
towering concrete slums.
In fact, people who live in towering concrete slums don't even want towering concrete
slums.
So let's all just shut up about the towering concrete slums.
In practice, most of the time higher density just means fewer sprawling nine-bedroom mansions,
and more townhouses.
So a good first step to increasing city housing would be to create a property class for the
medium-density properties you'd like to see, and then just incentivise the fuck out of
them through zoning decisions, and tax breaks, and international investment rules.
And to avoid those aforementioned towering concrete slums, make sure that the new construction
is a mixture of market properties, cheaper properties, and build-to-rent properties.
Because when supply catches up to demand, and more professional landlords enter the
market, a lot of really good shit starts falling into place.
Life for amateur landlords gets easier, because there's an industry standard to copy, and
the standards of rental properties get better, as landlords work to attract long term tenants,
trying to reduce costly vacancies.
And longer-term leases mean new standards and legislation about how comfortable tenants
can get.
Because you should be able to have pets, and paint the kitchen, and do up the garden, and yes, put
a nail into the wall, Tracey, okay? It's not the end of the world for a nail to be in the wall, okay?
*Applause.*
Look...
Thanks for the support, guys.
Renting will continue to suck as long as you feel like you're just living in your landlord's
AirBnB for a year.
You should be able to make your rental your home, and feel some sense of ownership over
it.
You should be able to raise a family there if you want, and not worry about your kids
having to move schools all the time.
Because once again: we are going to be renting forever.
Even if we fix the housing market within twenty years—which is a big if—it'll be too
late for millennials to get on the property ladder.
The housing crisis isn't fucking over everyone for a few decades, it's fucking over one
generation permanently.
So to make it up to us, the least you can do is make renting really bloody good.
And I know some of you are thinking, "Hey Robbie, this all sounds great, but even if
renting becomes really great, in renting rather than owning, aren't we still funnelling
our wealth to a landed gentry who become increasingly wealthy off the backs of poor people?
I mean, what's the difference between that and full-blown feudalism?" And to that!
To that, I would say: at least you can put a nail in the wall now!
At least you can put a nail in the wall.
Thank you.
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