Francisco Hernandez is a Green Party MP and – among other things – their spokesperson for Tertiary Education. As part of the writing for Issue 5’s Home Is Where The Landlord Is, Nexus’ own Toby Brockelbank sat down to ask him some questions.
TOBY:
We’re just going to talk about student housing and how much of a bitch it is really. I’ll just start with some background questions, like have you flatted before or did you flat as a student
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
Oh yeah, I mean I’m flatting now but, I mean, obviously in much better conditions than when I was a student down in Dunedin but I’ve done it, lived it, had the horror stories.
TOBY:
Could you share some of your horror stories?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
Dunedin gets really cold, Hamilton gets cold as well but, you know, sometimes it was colder on the inside of my flat than the outside and the flat that I lived in was quite dingy. I had really bad mold in my wardrobe, one time I went away just to like go home for a bit during the semester break and when I came back my wardrobe had mold all over it, had to chuck out a couple of shirts.
TOBY:
That’s gnarly. What was your experience like with the landlord when you were flatting as a student?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
It’s always awkward, right? There’s such a big power imbalance because not only do you have, and I don’t want to stereotype, but students who are flatting will generally have less life experience compared to their landlords. When I went down to Dunedin for the first time to study, I was 17, I really didn’t know what was happening at the time. When you’re young you’re in a vulnerable position, you’re very easy to take advantage of and there’s a big power differential between you and your landlord in many cases.
TOBY:
And how do you feel about the state of social – and student – housing right now?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
We’ve gone backwards over the past three years. If you look at the public housing stock, there’s been a decline in new builds and also decline in the projected builds that’s going on. In Dunedin, they’ve marked for sale lots of housing sites that they were [originally] going to build social or public housing in. It’s really disappointing that we’ve had such a step backwards under this government.
TOBY:
…Do we blame Tama Potaka for that?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
Oh look, I mean, I’m not in the blame game of blaming individual ministers, I think it’s the collective decisions of the ministers of this New Zealand First National Act government.
TOBY:
Why should we as young people trust you and your party to bring something to the table fast?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
The Greens are the only party in Parliament that’s actually come up with a plan that includes students to see them through the cost of living crisis. So what we’ve said is we want everyone to be getting a universal payment, and we want everyone to be getting free public transport. Unfortunately, the package that the government has announced is around $50 a week and only includes people like adults on working for families under a certain threshold.
That’s about 150,000 families in a country where the total number of households something like 1.8 million, so it’s really inadequate and doesn’t include students when it should. We’ve also said in the housing proposal that Tam just announced that we want to be helping students through things like implementing rent caps, through ensuring that young people can afford housing, that we’re investing in public housing. So yeah, we’re the party that have students’ backs.
TOBY:
Do you think there’s room to have pre existing buildings, like hotel and apartment units – privately owned buildings – be brought into the fold for some sort of socialised housing plan?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
Absolutely. I think converting existing housing stock as part of providing public housing is really something that we should consider. And I think what other countries have also done is convert unused office space into housing; there’s been a big shift to working from home, so there’s a lot of unused office space in some city centres. We’d like to see things like that happen.
You’d have to like, invest in converting it. I don’t think you can just start living under desks straight away. You’d have to make some conversions and whatnot.
TOBY:
What’s being done in the now – or what should be getting done in the now – while long term projects and bills get drafted up and passed through the many hands of the system?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
That’s a really important point you raised, because a lot of things that we can do to help students will take time in terms of building public housing. But the things that we can do right now is offer cost of living relief for students, making sure they can get the $50 a week.
What we can do now is making sure that students are getting things like the winter energy payment. It’s not winter yet, but when winter hits that they should be able to get there. What we can do now is make sure that we bring in things like rent caps so that people’s rents aren’t going up way above the cost of inflation.
TOBY:
So rent caps wouldn’t take the longest to be put in place?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
No, you can do that immediately. If the government wanted to pass rent cap legislation, they could do it right now. If the government wanted to offer cost of relief payment for students, they can do it right now.
I mean, we know that they’re doing that literally as we speak. A bill is being debated in the House right now around extending the cost of living relief for people who get working for families. But we feel like that should be done for students as well.
TOBY:
Where do you see the situation for young people with regards to housing going if we get another NACT-First coalition government?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
You can already look at what’s happened here with the sale of big chunks of our public housing and planned housing. I feel like we’re going to take even bigger steps backwards.
I’m doing a master’s part-time at Massey Uni, but I shouldn’t really lump myself in the student category because I know how privileged I am. So, I’m not going to say we, I’m going to say you. As rough as students have it, they’re not the worst off. People who are homeless, who are out on the street, we know that homelessness has exploded under this government. We know that the rate of declines for emergency housing has increased eightfold since this government has come in because they’re selling off or just scrapping emergency housing.
So, yeah, things are going to go way backwards for students, for homeless people, and for everyone else, quite frankly.
TOBY:
Yeah, I was doing some research into Tama Potaka’s changes and I saw that he converted a lot of emergency housing into social housing, is that right?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
Some of that has happened, but some emergency housing has just been cancelled altogether. You know, the motels and stuff have gone back to being motels.
And, you know, obviously we agree that people shouldn’t be growing up in motels, but if it’s the choice between growing up on the street or living in a motel, we know that the motel is obviously a much preferable alternative.
TOBY:
I actually just want to add something here:
With student well-being and health in general, how important do you think it is to have good functioning infrastructure in terms of skate parks and public spaces and green spaces? How do you think that would affect students and our country at large?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
Oh, it’s critical, right? Because there is, as well as every other crisis that’s happening in the country, there’s a mental health crisis that’s happening and access to livable spaces like that, access to libraries, to things that make people feel well is, really important as well, one of the biggest drivers to people feeling unwell is not having enough to eat and our plan to boost income for students will help with that as well.
TOBY:
Is there an appropriate balance of landlord-tenant rights?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
No. I think the previous government made steps in the right direction to giving more rights for renters, but this government, unfortunately, repealed many of those changes that were meant to give tenants better security of tenure and rebalance the rights back towards tenants.
TOBY:
Do you think the expense of housing for students drives us towards crime?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
It doesn’t just drive students to crime. It’s pretty well documented that if people are squeezed, if people don’t have enough income to live on, if people don’t have opportunities… And under this government, unemployment is at record highs, if people can’t get enough to support their families, no wonder some people turn to a life of crime. One of the biggest anti-crime things you could be doing is investing in a thriving, productive economy. It’s investing in your young people.
It’s investing in the students. Unfortunately, this government has chosen not to do any of those things and make decisions that criminalise people instead, like the homeless with the move-on orders.
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
As a student, I had friends who were studying full-time, working a part-time job, and then committing fraud or selling drugs just to be able to afford their house and their bills, that’s how it is and, you know, it shouldn’t be. I don’t condone any of that. I think it’s very sad that people have had to resort to that.
But, you know, particularly if they’ve got dependents to feed, if they’ve got people that need the support. I mean, this government has made it so much harder to access health and the overall support that people need. If they’re not giving people legitimate avenues to get work or to get the support they need… No wonder they’re getting desperate. It’s sad to see.
TOBY:
I’ve just got one final question, which is do you have any words of advice for the students and young people reading this?
FRANCESCO HERNANDEZ:
My final word is just to find comfort and solidarity in each other. The only thing that we have in this world is fundamentally each other – us – as people. It’s only by working together can we realise the change that we actually need.
Because one person can’t fund a hospital by themselves. But by working together, we’ve managed to build infrastructure, things like a public health system, things like a public education system. So just keep your faith in your fellow students, in your fellow people around you, and keep working together.
Because it’s brutal out there, man. Yeah. Fuck yeah.
Interview recorded Thursday, 26th of March, 2026.
