There are curtains at the windows and no signs of neglect or decay.

Yet this expensive, inner-city home is one of Tamaki Makaurau's "ghost houses" - properties left empty long-term at a time when the country has a housing crisis.

No one has lived there for years and a neighbour is paid to maintain the garden, while the owners wait for capital gains to accumulate to the point at which they plan to sell.

According to the 2018 Census, there are approximately 40,000 empty private homes in Auckland. That is 7.3 percent of the total, up from 6.6 percent in the previous Census in 2013.

Auckland is not the only place in Aotearoa with vacant homes at a time when accommodation is expensive and in short supply.

There are ghost homes in other cities, in towns and in rural areas.

Many unoccupied houses are holiday homes, dwellings awaiting demolition or renovation, or properties located in remote places where there are few jobs.

But a significant number are empty simply because the owners are focused on capital gains.

This is now an international phenomenon.

In England it is called "buy to leave," in New York it is described as "warehousing," while in British Columbia it is known as "wealth storing".

Property prices in London trebled between 1996 and 2007, meaning that homeowners made huge capital gains and did not pay the income tax they would be levied on other forms of earnings.

For these people, putting tenants into properties would be a negative because it would make their investments less liquid and therefore less valuable.

Vacant houses are worth more because they offer owners more flexibility and can be sold speedily.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this phenomenon is that it means that building more houses might not, in fact, mean more people obtain homes.

Counter-intuitively, rather than providing shelter for the homeless, constructing more homes might simply be increasing the pool of investment properties.

Putting tenants into properties makes investments less liquid and therefore less valuable.

Vacant houses are worth more because they offer owners more flexibility and can be sold speedily.

This calls into question the rationale and effectiveness of government and local authority policies and targets for providing more housing, both in this country and overseas.

It also makes it clear that a broad range of measures is required to address our housing crisis effectively.

In New Zealand, the Government and Auckland Council are examining how vacant houses in the city could be used for the homeless or low-income workers.

Mayor Phil Goff has spoken to ministers and says several thousand vacant homes could be pressed into service, perhaps for the Housing First programme, which finds shelter for homeless people, or for workers such as teachers, nurses and police officers who find it hard to obtain affordable accommodation.

We should look overseas to see what is being done there.

Reoccupying existing homes is much speedier and cheaper financially than constructing new dwellings - in Scotland, for example, the average cost of renovating an empty property is between £6000 and £25,000, compared with the average new-build outlay of £120,000.

In addition, it is less harmful environmentally to renovate than to construct from scratch. Continue reading

The move has been hailed by climate campaigners as a major victory.

The WCC represents half a billion Christians in 345 member churches, including the Church of England, but not the Catholic Church.

It is not clear divestment in fossil fuels will apply only to the council itself, which has a comparatively small investment fund, or its members as well.

Continue reading

Senior Church of England officials are conducting a wide-ranging review of the church's holdings, and its Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) was considering new guidelines on porn, which addresses the ease in which hardcore sexual images can be viewed over the Internet.

The soon to be concluded review will recommend how part of the church's NZ$10.5 billion portfolio should be invested in relation to Internet companies.

The Church of England ethical investment policy does not allow it to invest in companies that fuel problems against which it campaigns.

The ethical investment policy screens out those companies whose 'major part' of their business is engaged in the "production, transmission, publication or distribution of pornography."

Church officials said that investing today is complex because while its fund might not directly invest in platforms used to publish pornographic material, other businesses in its portfolio could have financial interests.

The church has already issued policies on how it should invest in businesses in areas such as alcohol, cloning and gambling.

Sources

• Telegraph
• Image: The Guardian

At a 16-nation Pacific island summit this month in New Zealand, Chinese officials explained they were "not particularly interested in sharing" fruits of their engagement, said Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia. "Our Chinese friends politely said, frankly, we will do our own investment and we will do our own quid pro quo on a bilateral context."

Source

• Island Business
• Image: English.new.cn