STEPHANIE RODGERS: PEOPLE LIVING IN CARS

Stephanie Rodgers is a list candidate for the Green Party. Although she says that 'only the Greens have the principles, the policies and the power to make the real changes we need to end poverty', it is unlikely she will be raising the issue of people living in cars while campaigning... 

IN A column about a housing crisis that the National Government refused to acknowledge, Stephanie Rodgers wrote in May 2016: 

'But this week John Key has looked up and everyone’s staring at him saying “WTF, mate? People are living in cars? We’re putting them up in motels so their kids can sleep in a bed for once and we’re charging them for the privilege? What the hell is going on and why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

And I don’t think he really knows what to do.'

Some seven years later the housing crisis has morphed into an entrenched full scale social emergency. But with the election of a Labour Government in 2017, Rodgers became noticeably less concerned about people living in cars, certainly not concerned enough to write about it again. Indeed, in October 2021 she was fulsome in her praise of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern describing her politics as ' 'the politics of caring for each other and taking reasonable, measured, practical steps to do it.'

This year Stephanie Rodgers is standing as a list candidate for the Green Party. Because she is nineteenth on a party list of thirty-two she has no chance of being elected. But this is all about raising her profile for next time. 

Even though as of June 23, 480 people applying for state housing said they were living in a vehicle, a rise from 107 in October 2017, it is unlikely to be an issue that Rodgers will be campaigning on. This is in despite of her claiming that 'only the Greens have the principles, the policies and the power to make the real changes we need to end poverty.'   

Her avoidance of the issue will be because Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is also the Assistant Minister of Housing with special responsibility for homelessness. It is under tenure that homelessness has continued to rise - and there are more people living in cars. But Rodgers certainly won't be asking Marama Davidson 'What the hell is going on and why aren’t you doing anything about it?”