Analysis - Parliament's final week was marked by decisions on traffic light settings, a scathing report on rents paid by MSD, and fresh revelations around MPs behaving badly, writes Peter Wilson.
It's a multimillion-dollar ministerial blind spot that is being called into question. Opposition parties are demanding accountability after revelations millions of dollars was shelled out by the Ministry of Social Development to private landlords for often-substandard housing. A report from the Auditor-General has found the government had paid $37 million to use private rentals for emergency housing, without any checks. The Minister is pleading ignorance. Here's our deputy political editor Craig McCulloch. [embed] https://players.brightcove.net/6093072280001/default default/index.html?videoId=6286889952001
It’s not an uncommon story. The machinery of emergency housing held 622 Wellington households in its gears at last count. The people in those households are signed on to short-term contracts with emergency housing providers, funded through grants provided by the Ministry of Social Development, one week at a time. But those contracts aren’t protected by the Residential Tenancies Act, giving people in emergency housing a shaky claim on the title “tenant”, and no certainty of shelter beyond seven days. On the other hand, the contracts sometimes roll over indefinitely – in some cases for years – because the actual social housing wait list now exceeds 22,000 people.