State House on $113K

NZPA reports that one state house has an *after* tax income of $113,602 amongst its tenants. This is double the average *pre* tax household income.

Now if one had a fair accommodation assistance policy where who owns your house doesn’t matter, then this wouldn’t be a concern.

But Labour reintroduced a policy where those in state houses get far more assistance than low income NZers with private landlords. This means that this blocks a more needy family from getting the lower rents.

The sensible solution is to go back to delivering accommodation assistance through the accommodation supplement only (so no discrimination based on who the landlord is) but failing that then Housing NZ needs to either evict tenants when they rise above a certain income level, or preferably sell the house to the tenants or a private sector landlord and use the money to buy more housing stock to help those on lower incomes.

UPDATE: Whale Oil helpfully converts those after tax incomes into pre tax incomes so comparisons are more useful.