WHY? To listen to people like Bill English youd think that Social Housing was a huge millstone around our collective necks. So I thought I wonder how much profit or loss the Housing New Zealand Corporation made last year?which is how I came to track down their Annual Report . Would it surprise you to learn that Housing New Zealand had an operating surplus last year of $121 million? And it returned a $90 million dollar dividend (profit) to them? You can find those figures here: hnzc.co.nz/our-publications/annual-report/2012-13-annual-repo... HNZC owns $18 Billion worth of property and the revaluation of its portfolio resulted in an increase in value of $1.2 billion. Now - it seems to me delivering $90 million to the governments coffers from something initially designed to be a not- for- profit social service to house the poor, is reasonably fairly healthy profit after all expenses. Some questions of course come to mind. Where did that $90 million go ? Or the $76 million from the year before.. or the $68 million the year before that? Into new housing? Or into the Consolidated Fund? And here are some other questions that occur to me... Why would the government want to offload the provision of social housing to other providers if its already making a decent profit out of it? Why has social housing returned more profit each year under the Key government when the tenants are struggling on low incomes? Why should social housing make a large profit each year anyway? Why doesnt HNZC aim to break even by pouring back the profits into new housing stock? And, why would you sell housing stock in the Regions when you want to encourage people to move to those same Regions to ease the pressure on big Cities like Auckland and develop a more diverse economy? Id really like some answers to these Why questions. Maybe someone in the Opposition could raise them in the House next time it sits. Or perhaps some Chartered Accountant reading this blog could cast an eye over the Annual Report and explain to me why the accounts are not as healthy as they appear. Because even if you do not support the idea that the State should help house the poor - $90 million doesnt seem to be a bad profit to make out of people who have no wealth accumulating assets of their own. You can find more of my writing on my website bryanbruce.conz #endchildpoverty #housing #BillEnglish #bryanbruce #NewZealand bryanbruce.co.nz/blog/child-poverty/why
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 07:24:28 +0000
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