A man’s home is his castle. That’s a saying, not so old as when knights were bold – that bastion of freedom, where every man had the opportunity to own and occupy his piece of land, with little interference from the state or another man.

But within the time of living memory this has changed rapidly to a point where the house is a source of revenue not only to the demands of the banks, the local bodies, industry and worst to the aggrieved wife, not happy with her lot in life.

Now we have taken another turn for the worse and one which is seeing the New Zealand man stripped of citizenship, effectively reduced to residents in a South Seas rendition of Rome.

Making this increasingly obvious is the recent changes to housing policy applied by the Reserve Bank to home buyers. I cringed when I saw this and where we were headed.

I hold the Prime Minister to account on this one because I believe he is financially astute enough to be aware of where this policy would take us and that he actually supported the outcome.

If there was a genuine attempt to restrict runaway house-prices and support New Zealanders into homes, the policy would have been directed at speculators and multiple-home owners by increasing the cash requirement to be invested.

The heat in the housing market comes from speculation, not genuine home owners entering and exiting the market.

Why then would you want a policy that makes it substantially harder for New Zealanders to break into the housing market and own their own home – the answer is this.

By restricting Kiwi home ownership you make more houses, particularly in Auckland available to speculators, who in turn fuel the building-supply-industry along with a limited number of trade people connected to speculators.

The end product is quickly looking pretty and ready for sale to the highest bidder, which includes plenty of overseas buyers who bleed more money than we collectively have blood.

That continues to fuel our housing market but also funds our economy. We are effectively selling our real estate so we can look good on paper and politicians can gloat about how well our economy is doing.

For the man in the street, housing is no longer housing, it is expensive accommodation and set to get more expensive.

When this little economic burst translates into a rise in interest rates there’s going to be a lot of sad faces, especially in Auckland when they see what they are paying the bank. No wonder any sensible young family is becoming wary of entering the housing market.

Before any one tells me this is not a men’s issue just remember our forebears fought for this piece of dirt and they didn’t do that so it could be sold out from under us. Nor do we need men, who are genuinely committed to their families, stressed to breaking point to pay for this stupidity.