EWW: Aspiring to more than two houses

Judith Collins wants you to be aspirational.

Hey team. I am overwhelmed with tiredness. It feels like recovery is one step forward, two steps back. I feel OK, then I feel awful. I have a good sleep so I have a shower and then I’m absolutely knackered and need to sleep for another four hours. I am being well looked after though and I’ve been lucky enough to have some bedside visitors which has kept my spirits up.

I watched the Leaders Debate on the toilet which seems fitting. I don’t think anyone won. I don’t think anyone can win when we have families living in studio motels for endless months while they wait for a Housing New Zealand home. I don’t think their hungry kids who can only watch life from the windows are winning.

Judith Collin’s smirked response that her “trust” owns two houses, when John Campbell asked her about paying tax on her second home really hit me. She said she wouldn’t support Capital Gains Tax which is no surprise. But her assertion that she wanted New Zealanders to be aspirational sunk me.

Who wants to live in a society where we aspire to own more than two houses?

I am aspirational. I really am. But my friends and I don’t aspire to own multiple homes. We don’t hope one day we’ll have multiple properties so we can raise rents each year and add to our piles of expensive crap.

We are aspirational though.

Material things? We definitely want them. A friend just came over and we talked about how our school will cope without the annual fundraiser which has been cancelled due to Covid 19. We aspire to ensuring there’s enough toilet paper at school and at decile 1 schools around our area.

We are definitely keen on ensuring the sandwich runs are picked up again to ensure kids are getting at least one meal a day. We aspire to material things like ensuring we can do the can drive for the local soup kitchen where the lines are long and everyone there is cold and hungry.

We love a good shop. There are around 682,500 people in poverty in this country. That is one in seven households. It’s 220,000 children. Being able to buy a few things every shop for others, because we know There But For The Grace of Someone Go I is a privilege.

We have aspirations.

We want a country where you don’t delight in 20,000 families being on a list for emergency housing. We want a country where that is seen as a fucking tragedy – not something you smirk about and clock as a “win” in a debate.

I aspire to having leaders who look us in the eye and tell us they’re ashamed that we live in such a properous country and yet people are sleeping in garages and cars and aspiring to a fucking motel room, where their children probably aren’t safe.

Do you really think two houses is what we want?

We aspire to homes that are dry and warm. Homes that don’t have black mould!

Māori and Pasifika children made up two thirds of children under two hospitalised with a respiratory infection. TWO FUCKING THIRDS. Our housing is killing our children.

Dr Tristram Ingram’s study found almost 20 percent of those children could be kept from getting so sick they have to be hospitalised, if only they were in dry homes that didn’t have mould.

As reported in RNZ: “A building inspector checked the homes of 642 children under two-years-old, including controls, and found children were up to five times more likely to be hospitalised if they lived in homes where dampness, mould and water leaks were detected.”

I aspire to living in a country where that’s a fucking outrage. Where the focus on renting isn’t – as Judith Collins suggested in the debate - about making sure “unruly tenants” can be kicked out, but on the thousands of children suffering because even a mouldy, damp dump costs more than half of their income.

National wants to give me a tax cut. I am struggling financially but I don’t struggle nearly as much as my friends do. I don’t want a fucking tax cut.

I want money for the children’s hospital so I don’t have to fucking fundraise every year. I want money for women who are using rolled up paper towels from mall toilets for their periods. I want money for children who feel like they can’t go to school anymore because they need to help mum and dad pay rent.

I want people who work full time to be able to afford to feed their families and keep a roof over their head. I want that to be enough. I want it to not be a dream that working full time isn’t enough to pay your rent so you can say to your child “don’t be silly, you stay in school, we have enough money to pay rent”. How do we live in a country where people can’t earn enough to live when they work full time and yet we’re giving tax cuts to people who can?

I have friends who worked in supermarkets and packing plants during Covid 19 who couldn’t afford masks for the bus ride to work. They put themselves at risk during a pandemic and we paid them minimum wage. If you have not lived on minimum wage you have no right to suggest life is harder on a middle income. It just isn’t.

This tax cut isn’t aspirational. You are foolish if you think an extra $50 a week will send you on your way to a second house. You’ll never be as wealthy as Judith Collins.

This tax cut is about dividing us further. It’s about saying that by being a “middle” income earner you deserve more. You strive for more than those low income earners…You can be like us. We won’t raise their minimum wage and we’ll give you more money in your pocket. The gap widens but don’t worry - you’re on our side of the gap.

Fuck the gap. Fucking destroy the gap.

On October 19, families in emergency housing for longer than a week will begin having to pay rent - despite the fact that they’re effectively homeless. This rent will be 25 percent of the family's income. Auckland Action Against Poverty coordinator Brooke Stanley Pao told Newshub it's a "really cruel and inhumane policy to introduce". It never stops. We never stop hurting our most vulnerable people.

Both leaders are not doing enough to face the fact that we are losing people in this country to bone crushing poverty. If Covid 19 has taught us anything I hope it’s that you might be on one side of the gap today, but tomorrow you could be on the other side.

The Judiths of the world will never be where you are. They want you to believe that you can be like them. Just aspire to own more than two homes.

Don’t let them tell you your aspirations are for a vapid life, hoarding houses and feeling like it’s never enough. Don’t aspire to a New Zealand where everyone is out for themselves.

Vote for those on the other side of the gap because that could be you one day.