PAC and Squatters Not On the Same Planet

The Public Accounts Committee, commenting on the increase of illegal squatting, "is of the view that there are existing State housing facilities that could be used by people living below the poverty line." Click here.

This is an old and very dangerous opinion. I first heard it in the early 1970s, and there were probably vocal "deniers" well before then, but its resurrection in 2009 displays even more ignorance now than it did then because much more information is now available on squatting. The PAC should familiarize themselves with some of it. They could start by reading a recent short article in the Fiji Times, and then put these four questions to those who know (the city councils, the relevant government departments, the Housing Authority, the Public Rental Board, relevant NGOs, including Rotahomes and ECREA, and the Bureau of Statistics): 1. How many households are presently housed in state housing facilities? 2. What is their estimate of the number of poor squatter households? 3. How many of these households cannot afford the housing planned or available? 4. How many decades do they estimate it will take to close the gap between state-provided housing supply and squatter demand? Thus armed, they may care to publicly correct their false balance sheet. Photo: Fiji Times.

P.S. The gap would close more quickly if government and urban authorities would adopt realistic supervised "site and service"land provision, and help the poor to build and progressively improve their own houses. This is not a new idea. It has been promoted for at least 40 years, most recently by ECREA and a NZAid-funded scoping study in 2007 led by former Victoria University geographer Dr John McKinnon. Apparently further work was been deferred due to the political situation.