While I may not have done exactly this, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world? Possibly even a step in the right direction?
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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The really big issue, especially with the prioritisation of development on the outskirts of the current urban areas, is that councils cannot afford the infrastructure costs to serve these new homes.
I’ll refer to a live Auckland example that I know well. The Supporting Growth programme, led by NZTA and Auckland Transport, has been planning the necessary transport corridors for the next 30 odd years of housing development. The aim is to protect these corridors so that they don’t get built out thus reducing future construction costs, and to give developers clear signals about where the government agencies will invest and in what order.
They are currently submitting notices of requirement. This creates present day property liabilities. There is, however, not enough money to meet the required property purchases and this is completely undeveloped land that we are talking about. The remaining land will be even more expensive in the future. There absolutely will not be enough money in the future to actually build all of the transport infrastructure without some significant funding regime changes, and this is just one example, in Auckland, for transport. It is compounded across all of the high growth urban areas and other horizontal infrastructure like the 3 waters.
So far I’ve only talked about the pure financial cost, but there are other economics costs due to the increase in car travel that will occur. More deaths and serious injuries, higher levels of congestion, increased greenhouse gas and other pollution emissions, etc.
There is a reason that so many professions have been calling for greater intensification and the MDRS, while it wasn’t perfect, was a much better solution AND was originally bi-partisan.
This does include forcing the councils to allow greater intensification of housing, but yeah, more sprawl is on the horizon.
With it being difficult for councils to support the new developments on the outskirts, what's to stop the council saying those rates are twice as high?
Doesn’t that intensification policy come with a huge out in the form of councils just saying that intensification will destroy the area’s ‘character’?
One of the conditions is that they have to provide equivalent elsewhere if they to pull that card. I'd guess the devil is in the detail.
I’m just wondering what that elsewhere entails. If they aren’t strict about it I could imagine councils just pointing to land far away from anything and saying ‘see we provided an alternative’.
Yeah for sure. Not much point in intensifying transport corridors if you're just gonna transfer that intensification zoning to the outskirts.
Sprawl has so many extra costs too particularly around transportation. Given council budgets are already severely pressured its hard not to pre-judge that there'll be at the least a decrease to overall public transport by dilution if not just no services in some areas. So more traffic on local roads which means more emissions and more cost on councils maintaining roads for more cars.
This might be something for the next government to build on. More housing (in the right places) is definitely something the country needs, and this government has made it clear they won't invest in infrastructure (other than roads). Changes will take a while to have an effect, with luck maybe we will have a new government with a plan to build better infrastructure.
I’m all for housing intensification in cities and flooding the market, but for the love of god can they please invest in improving public and alternative transport infrastructure? I already hate returning to visit Auckland due to how bad the traffic is
I think we've got the wrong government for that. This policy is effectively free, while building infrastructure is... well not free, but probably cheaper as a whole than not building needed infrastructure.
I think we've got the wrong government
You can say that again hah!
This is exactly what needs to be done.
Cheap government owned, privately rented housing, and lots of it. It won't be fancy, but it will be safe and efficient and regulated. Imagine having a landlord/agent who is actually accountable? It would be amazing.
This isn't government owned housing though. So the safe, efficient, and regulated part may not be correct.
oh no
That's easy to say, but the truth is landlords are absolutely held accountable. The tenancy tribunal is heavily in favour of the tenant, meaning the burden of proof is on the landlord, which is fair enough.
I posted a story here a few days ago about a landlord getting reamed out over dodgy practices actually.
while true, it's not to the level that government departments are kept to.
And in what world will we find an accountable government?
Yup.
It's weird that National are doing more about housing affordability than Labour, given that National are typically the party of business, while Labour are supposed to, you know, look after the working class
And there is nothing in that proposition that is especially difficult to do, meaning it will probably happen.
Sounds good on a headline but I think the policy misses a huge opportunity and will ultimately only help rich people.
Theyre right in that Flooding the housing market with houses is the only way to bring the cost down. But national is letting housing developers try and fill the demand gap Housing developers will build houses to make money but not enough to fill the demand gap. It's also not going to work because the demand is to high and housing developers don't want to "flood the market"
If the housing was built and owned by the government at least it could be used as a safety net for the people unable to keep up with rising house prices. In nationals situation developers win, people who can afford to own investment properties win, renters lose and poor people lose.
Every dollar the government "saves" not building those houses will be spent renting emergency housing from those developers or subsiding rent for people who can't afford to live in them.
This is obviously just a ploy to make some developers richer.
You say this as though "housing developers" are one entity that works together, rather than a group of businesses all competing with each other, and not necessarily all that fond of the competition.
Housing developers are a group that lobby political parties for policy that is in all their interest so it's i think its fair to lump them into a single group here. They have gotten what they want.
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Expensive unsustainable sprawl
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expensive unsustainable sprawl
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deciding not to intensify for character reasons will lead to denser sprawl on city fringes without amenities, defeating the point a great extent given public transport funding has been slashed. This is already happening in Auckland
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mixed use fuck yes do that
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no minimum apartment size seems terrible when combined with the other sprawl idk. Banks are already very squeamish about lending less than 45sq m aren't they or has that changed
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Wasn't the MDRS better than this though?
Build good quality, well sized apartment blocks and terraces in centrally located connected areas people actually want to live. If the private market can't or won't do that, then the state needs to step in and do it, like in every other housing crisis we've had in this country.
#1 & #2 does feel like a bit of a gift to the folks who got in some years ago and banked land on the boundaries. Explains why an apple orchard down the road felled all the trees and just left them there - no new grafts or anything; the block got bought by a major property developer who must have seen the chances of either a zoning change or removal of the urban/rural zone coming.
Sprawl typically also means fewer 200+m2 houses on larger blocks of land when looking at opening up public spaces and building denser housing close to public transport is a better solution for long term transport emissions.
Isn't the whole point of the legislation encouraging just what you're suggesting though?
It'll be great if it does, but there appears to be a big focus on greenfield both explicitly and giving opt outs to councils that can push to "other" areas if they don't upzone so called character areas.
So pushing development to the fringes that are less served by existing infrastructure and services, and therefore more expensive or just downright worse in that regard.
Does that give incentive for the council to not use the character clause? They can use it, but if they do they will face more expensive servicing of properties.
Yes I'd imagine so, and they might take it that way.
On the other hand, they might make the politically easier decision in the short term if those more expensive servicing costs are incurred in the future when it comes time to maintain/replace greenfield infrastructure.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure councils bend to NIMBYs all the time, even when it's a bad idea.
But there have been some recent examples, Auckland, Wellington, where they haven't so I guess there's hope!
There is a greenfield development in Upper Hutt that is nearing completion, on a former Ag Research piece of land. It's a very dense development, a mixture of townhouses and stand alone buildings, with the standalone buildings mostly multi story. Still has walking access to public transport and shops, too.
It's definitely easier to build on a large scale when starting from scratch like that.
Good luck finding the labour required to build them.
Or the timber.
Or the sections.
It feels weird having such a sensible suggestion come from National actually.