Debbie Leyland says thousands of families are struggling to get by
Wellington woman Debbie Leyland says an upside – if you could call it that – of being poor is that you get used to it.
“It’s awful, because no one should get used to not being able to buy fruit or vegetables or whatever. It’s horrible but it’s just the way it is.”
She is on a benefit for health reasons and is in a Housing New Zealand home. After paying her rent and power bill, she says, she is usually left with about $190 a week for food, transport, internet and any other costs that come up.
If it is a week in which she has also had to help out her two children, who sometimes struggle with money, it leaves her looking at supermarket shelves wondering what she could buy.
She said it worked out more expensive because she was living week-to-week. She could not afford to bulk buy or to buy frozen food to store in her freezer. Instead, she had to go to the shops a couple of times a week to purchase vegetables. She is vegetarian but has been feeling the pressure of rising food prices.
“Yesterday I went to Pak’nSave, I wanted to get potatoes, broccoli, some kumara – $10.90 for a kilogram of kumara is mad.”
She said it had become a lot tougher over the past six months. “If I could bulk buy I could get a big bag of potatoes for $20 but I don’t have the money. It’s still going up, it’s ridiculous and also makes me worry.”
She said processed food was a lot cheaper. “Being poor has a flow-on effect, if you have a family you’re going to buy the cheapest, processed stuff because you have no option.”
Poverty was a faceless issue, Leyland said, but there were thousands of people facing similar decisions as they tried to feed their families. “People have to understand that people living in poverty are not lazy or anything, they’re poor. No one wakes up and goes ‘I want to live in poverty today’.”
Craig Renney, policy director at the NZ Council of Trade Unions, said Leyland’s story was a familiar one.
“My mum always used to say it costs a lot of money to be poor. Everything you buy when you’re poor and don’t have choices is more expensive. If you want to borrow money when you’re poor, it costs more. If you want to buy a car, it costs more because you end up buying it on hire-purchase over a long period of time… if you don’t have access to a vehicle and you have to go to the local dairy for your shopping, it’s more expensive.”
People who had to live further out of the city would have higher costs of commuting.
He said things like housing were also much more expensive over a person’s lifetime. “If you’re renting, you’re paying money until the day you die. If you own your own home, you don’t. You’re buying your own asset back… it costs a lot of money to be wealthy but it costs even more to be poor. As a proportion, your disposable income gets thinner because essential costs are more expensive.”
David Riley, a spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group, pointed to research by Powerswitch which showed that prepay power, which is often used by people who do not have a good credit history, could be 8% to 23% more expensive. In addition, power was often more expensive in remote areas where housing might be cheaper.
“Some electricity retailers charge disconnection and or reconnection fees. Prepay plans may include fees extra fees when topping up or asking for credit status etc. There is currently a campaign and petition to see the end of disconnection and reconnection fees and to make the Electricity Authority Consumer Guidelines compulsory”
People living in more remote areas also often had more hurdles to getting quality internet connections.
“There are many other factors that lead to poverty. We know that being Maori or Pasifika or being disabled or in a household with someone disabled all increase the chances of being in poverty. The assumption is these people face increased costs as well as reduced or no capacity to earn more. Transport is a big cost and living rurally the cost of getting anything delivered is significantly more,”
Renney said household living cost data from Stats NZ had shown that for the past 15 years, the cost of living for the poorest 20% of households had risen faster than the top 20%. “Things like mobile phones, IT and discretionary items actually got cheaper on a quality-adjusted basis. But rent, food rates, that sort of thing, went up much faster than general inflation.”
That had only changed recently as interest rates started to rise quickly.
Whether the trend returned would depend on how fast core inflation subsided as interest rates levelled off.
UCAN - United Community Action Network Aotearoa NZ 