Overcrowding and Poverty

Everyones an expert these days. Auckland doctor Peter Didsbury sees the effects of poverty every day:

Ultimately, he says, lifting health outcomes requires lifting low-end incomes. “If we really want to solve some of the disparities our communities experience, it has to be about education, employment and income.”


Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. 
He’s a soft touch who has no idea about culture other than his own bog-standard white variety. 


To refer back to a previous paragraph:
He sees extended families crowding into one house to save money. “Mum and Dad are often in the garage while the grandparents and kids have taken over the main house,” he says.
Of course: The family will be Samoan and they’ll all be tithing off their pay packet or benefits to the church; most of it will be going back to Samoa and the rest to Whatsisname Ponytail for Christ-town.
Someone will have just died back in Samoa and they’ll be in hock up to their eyeballs because of the extortionate amount charged for funerals back there. 
So they can’t afford disinfectant and cleaning products; they may wash once a week to save on power. 


I’d like to know how overcrowding is defined. There are seven in our house and the kids are all clean (relatively), well fed and have never had cellulitis in their lives. We have a bit more coin now, but even when we were tithing off a lot more to the bank, hygiene levels were maintained.
With regards to respiratory illnesses: This is New Zealand. Over last winter which stretched from July to the end of December, there were always sick people in our house. We had the norovirus three times, a hospital admission for bronchiolitis; the vicks and mops were out constantly. It was the same for many other people in our humid, cold and wet neighborhood.


To my mind we’re importing socialism from other ares of the Pacific. I’m not Samoan bashing; I know what can happen through Samoan friends. And Samoans have a great sense of family where whiteys cut the cord. We just have to be realistic about the causes of some of the “poverty” seen and work on education and help within the community instead of handouts.