Activists have been campaigning to prevent the removal of public housing in the Auckland suburb of Glenn Innes since April 2.
Many Tenants who have lived in the homes for decades have been evicted. Contractors are preparing to remove the homes for a new housing development. The development will reduce public housing, and evicted tenants have not gotten any guarantees of a right to return.
Tenants, local community members and activists in the Mana Party organised to try to stop the removals,. They have peacefully blockaded and occupied the empty houses in protest.
Housing affordability has worsened over the past decade in New Zealand. Prices have risen much faster than incomes and the country now has one of the highest rates of housing unaffordability in the world.
The Human Rights Commission said in 2010 there were more than 10,000 New Zealanders on the public housing waiting list.
Prime Minister John Key, who boasts about having been raised in public housing as a child, has responded to the protests by putting the view that public housing is merely a temporary “stepping stone” for New Zealanders and shouldn't be seen as a “home for life”.
But housing activist Shane Malva told TVNZ in February that in the commercial rental market tenants were paying up to four-fifths of their income on rent. In state housing, rents have been capped at 25% of a tenant's income since 1999.
Police moved in and violently removed the house occupiers on April 18. Mana Party vice president John Minto was arrested and several protesters injured.
Mana Party leader Hone Harawira said: “In the best tradition of passive resistance we formed a line across the road to slow the movement of the house down Silverton Road. The police waded in with unwarranted violence against the mainly local women on the line.
“The first state house left Glen Innes last night on the back of a truck with a massive police escort and left in its wake a bruised community, battered protesters and one woman taken to Auckland hospital by ambulance after she had a seizure resulting from the treatment she received at the hands of the police.”
The Tamaki Housing Group and the Mana Party are calling for a four-week moratorium on any further house removals to allow for talks with community representatives, and to prevent any further police violence against protesters.