Hard News: What Now?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Auckland's struggling now, never mind in 18-24 months' time when it's finally possible to get tradies to move back north. What's going to happen to the cost of using the services of the few who'll remain in the interim?
We need more houses and we need more tradies. Government can surely help with that. Indeed one helps with the other. If apprenticing was more incentivized immediately, there could be thousands of jobs made tomorrow. They won't be instant sparkies, chippies and plumbers, but they could help a lot, and could be sparkies, chippies and plumbers in a few years, when we will surely still be needing them.
It even hooks into the "work for benefits" mentality that the Government was already trying to push. Except it will be work that is actually needed, which also has a future. Like I said a few days ago, this could be a "tradie-led recovery".
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One thing I would find really helpful would be a graphic of incomes by suburb for Christchurch. I've heard of Fendalton, probably in the same way that people in Christchurch have heard of Remuera and we've all heard of Kandallah, but many of these names mean nothing to me. I don't know which are the "good" suburbs and which are the "bad", in the same way that I wouldn't expect someone from Christchurch to be able to order by rough social status the suburbs of Mangere East, Glendene, Unsworth Heights, and Ellerslie.
People talk of "the eastern suburbs" like we're meant to know where they fit in the social pecking order, and rattle off suburb names as information - except that they're just data for many of us, lacking as they are in context.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Ick. Don't. It's depressing enough thinking about how I won't be able to afford a house even vaguely close to the city for at least another two years. If I'm lucky.
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'Not bitter' is also the tone of Campbell Live's story (stream, 4 mins) about their visit to Aranui.
It goes with those tweets I pasted here yesterday. I'm not sure how representative the conclusion is but I guess it shows that you report what you find no matter what your producer thinks. TVNZ news were using the word 'frustration' in their coverage but I didn't notice any interviews with locals.
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Sacha, in reply to
If apprenticing was more incentivized immediately, there could be thousands of jobs made tomorrow.
Sadly they would likely be jobs in Australia. I agree tradies are needed but this current situation is affected by the whole low wage economy we've created over the past few decades.
Haven't tradespeople also been leaving because they're tired of waiting for the insurance folk to authorise work after the September quake? May need more insurance assessors, or a different way to address that completely. Like Housing Minister Heatley authorising rent holidays for all of Housing Corp's Christchurch tenants rather than stuffing around trying to figure out which one's were eligible. Of course that's the opposite of a National government's usual preference for tight targetting so it might create some tension if applied more widely even if it makes sense.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
hyperbolic judement-pants
Would that be these pants?
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Sacha, in reply to
People talk of "the eastern suburbs" like we're meant to know
I tried to find some info yesterday broken down by suburb and it was the usual fruitless hunt through mounds of irrelevant stuff. Someone with more specific regional development or policy expertise might know where to look.
Not an urgent priority but it would be interesting to see some mapping of portaloo deployment since the quake compared with surrounding population. Then we can see how the perception of bias matches the reality.
Meantime, all strength to the locals with their vigilante redeployment, and to the volunteers of the Rangiora Express delivering cheap chemical bucket loos direct to the eastern suburbs before the authorities have done anything there it seems.
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st ephen, in reply to
This isn't really the place to make generalisations about people from Christchurch, and I'll note that apparently the most unusual thing about the demographics of Canterbury is that in terms of age, ethnicity, qualifications, industry and occupation, Canterbury is 'more typical of New Zealand' than most other regions. (see http://www.motu.org.nz/files/docs/MRU_issue_06.pdf).
But yeah, to a Cantabrian Auckland may as well be Perth or Darwin. I wouldn't be surprised if Auckland gets the recent migrants to Christchurch (apart from the Brits who'll go home), the home-grown workforce opts for Australia and the beneficiaries spread around the South Island.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Granny did a few articles about a month ago
Yes funny how they decided to do that article at exactly the peak time for rentals when university students come back from where ever they go and run around Auckland trying to find flats.
Perhaps the same story any other time of year would have had 12 people turning up to view the flat but lets not let that get in the way of a story.
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One thing I would find really helpful would be a graphic of incomes by suburb for Christchurch.
I know income by suburb is available somewhere, because I was using it as part of sets of demographic data when we were house-hunting last year. Not as a map, you had to go suburb-by-suburb, but the data is around.
East Christchurch is, I think, like South Auckland. Actually, there are bits that aren't that badly off. And there are areas (Hornby and Sydenam leap to mind) outside of it that are also pretty deprived. You go far enough east, you're back in Hillside McMansion territory. But it's where most of the poverty is, and there is considerable snobbery around it, so in broad terms it's a useful distinction.
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Sacha, in reply to
One thing I would find really helpful would be a graphic of incomes by suburb for Christchurch.
Home ownership rates might be interesting too, including for the difference in whose voice is heard when responses are coordinated. Aware this is all rather academic when there are people on the ground without the basics, not knowing what's coming tomorrow let alone next month.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Oh fark, Malcolm McDowell called. His droogies want their Neezhnies back or pretty Judie is going to get a britva in the litso and other ultra-violence done on his pretty plott. Right-right, o my brothers?
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From the 2006 census - by census unit rather than suburb, but you can get an idea.
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I know income by suburb is available somewhere, because I was using it as part of sets of demographic data when we were house-hunting last year.
QV has a lot of data. You just have to pay for it.
Income might be interesting, but I expect house prices would give a general indication of the wealth of a suburb.
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Heh, income by suburb from the 2006 census, off the CCC website. (Warning: PDF) Also, that map doesn't distinguish between areas where nobody makes any money, and ones where nobody lives.
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I was looking for business activity data. Probably a bit ambitious
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
TVNZ news were using the word ‘frustration’ in their coverage but I didn’t notice any interviews with locals.
Well, of course there’s bloody frustration – but some of the media coverage does have the awful high-pitched dog-whistle of a story being spun to fit the headline when the reality is both less melodramatic and more complex. “Conflict” is an easy hook to hang a story off, but if this isn’t the time and place to resist it what is?
I already look forward to the articles in the Listener about the wonderful impact this will have on the value of houses in Auckland.
While I dread the inevitable Herald bourgeois property porn-cum-pity-party. Someone new to blame for those poor six figure double-income Aucklanders denied their fundamental human right to live in over-valued, over-leveraged houses in fashionable inner-city suburbs. Staying home on Friday nights and having to wear your Karen Walker and Trelise Cooper for another season (after picking through the sales tables)! O, the humanity! Will nobody think about the entitled infants!
Rant over. Promise.
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NBH,
NZDEP 2006 is an actual measure of 'deprivation' of an area based on a variety of different variables (not just income): http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/pagesmh/8066/$File/NZDep2006_av-dep-scores.pdf - Christchurch areas look to be on pp7-8 of that PDF. Unfortunately I don't think a really useful graphical representation for this discussion is available online, but there's a high-res map of the Canterbury DHB region that you can blow up to get a general picture of the region: http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/Files/deprivation-maps/$file/canterbury.pdf
NZDEP is measured by decile, so a value of '1' means that an area is one of the 10% least deprived areas, while '10' means it's one of the 10% most deprived areas.
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There's also the major cities Quality of Life survey series, but mostly not in map form like the one Emma shared. Direct link for 2008 Christchurch report (pdf, 3.5MB)
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NBH,
The Quality of Life survey is, in an unfortunate coincidence, being conducted at the moment. Needless to say, they won't be collecting any more data for Christchurch (I'm not sure what they'll be doing with the data collected before the quake).
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Sounds like the factors used to assess impact might need review - has the response been to areas that were harder hit in *engineering* terms but not necessarily social ones? Was existing resilience and capacity taken into account? Or are cracks in the road treated as a proxy for need?
Meanwhile, Civil Defence national controller John Hamilton has assured residents of the hard-hit eastern suburbs everything possible was being done to help them, but his workers had been prioritising the most earthquake-damaged areas.
He asked for understanding from residents of some less badly hit areas that were not receiving the same amount of aid.
Note story also has Key trying out blaming Christchurch for the New Zealand economy being mismanaged into a double dip recession since September.
Mr Key said the economy last year suffered due to the September quake and he thought the first two quarters of this year would have been positive without the latest disaster.
Another lie in need of savaging by an effective opposition. Or we'll be hearing it over and over this year. Cantabrians deserve better.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Yes funny how they decided to do that article at exactly the peak time for rentals when university students come back from where ever they go and run around Auckland trying to find flats.
Actually, peak time was the week before last. First semester started Monday for most students, as you know. Having this time last year been in a flat that was rated attractively for students, I'm pretty familiar with their renting activity trends.
Plus that ignores the people who had been searching since around Christmas, which is very definitely not peak student season, and still not found anything. Dismiss the stories based on timing if you want, but there were data points that were well outside your derisive snort of "student time".
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Sacha, in reply to
The Quality of Life survey is, in an unfortunate coincidence, being conducted at the moment.
I'm out of touch. Is there still a disability sub-sample? I don't think anyone has analysed the 2008 one yet (evidence, you must be kidding) but I did manage to at least lobby to have it collected. Persuading those in charge that disability wasn't a subset of health, not so successful.
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Found this little gem on Red Alert Posted by Brendon Burns
Shirley is another hard-hit part of my electorate. Power is mostly back on but water and sewerage is a problem and unlike September 4’s impact here, there’s considerable house damage. With others like the City Mission, I’ve been ferrying in what supplies can be mustered from CD HQ – nappies are a particular need. My caravan is in Shirley at 4pm today – day three – handing out emergency grant forms, face masks, hand sanitiser and hugs.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
I was looking for business activity data.
Jeez Sach, will you make up your mind? ;-)
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