Larry Williams Drive

Now, on this decision by the Government to cut the First Home Buyers Grant in order to put the money into social housing instead- I've got to be honest, on principle, it's not the kind of thing I love. Because I'd personally much rather the Government give a helping hand to Kiwis trying to do the right thing rather than constantly bailing out the delinquents.But in this one respect, I think they’re prioritising the right thing.Because we have got a massive social housing crisis. And we cannot ignore this. We have 25,000 on the waiting list to get into a house, that's why we have people crammed into emergency housing in the middle of our biggest cities, it's why we had huge numbers of Rotorua's motels converted into emergency housing. We've got to fix that, as a priority. Because if we don't, it's only going to create a ripple effect of bigger and bigger social problems that come from people living in motels with other delinquents rather than houses.And also, the First Home Grant is actually a low value scheme