Will not help affordability but will wreck heritage neighbourhoods.
The latest intensification policies to be imposed on Auckland by the Government and Auckland Council have dismayed and angered local residents – many of whom voted at the last election in protest at similar policies of the previous government. Now they are finding it’s a case of ‘new boss same as old boss’.
The Minister leading this, Chris Bishop, has just amended the Resource Management Act which he blames (incorrectly) for the housing affordability crisis, rather than 30 years of neo-liberal policies, to give himself unprecedented directive powers over residential planning in Auckland.
On the face of it, this is for a worthy purpose, to make housing more affordable, or so the minister claims. But, of course, he does not intend tackling housing affordability as New Zealand governments once did – and very successfully – by building affordable homes and associated facilities and infrastructure and then financially assisting mainly young buyers into them. Instead, the cocksure Bishop, being a standard beltway politician, is relying on a market solution – the supply side – deregulating and massively ramping up of the number of sites zoned for potential dwellings. However, the demand side, impacted by the decades-long decline in the average income of working people (25% below that of the early 1980s) and their ability to buy a house, he studiously avoids.
We need here to go back to the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP) of 2016. Driven by the Key Government (and the NZ Property Council) the AUP added c1 million new potential residential units in Auckland to the 506,000 existing consented dwellings. Then the Ardern Government’s NPS-UD, and its MDRS (Medium Density Residential Standards) of 2022 imposed 3 units of 3 storeys over wide swathes of single house zones across Auckland. This was encompassed in the council’s shambolically processed Plan Change 78. These together added another 2 million potential dwellings to those of the AUP. However, as the result of the property sector’s lobbyists who have free access to the Beehive, pushing for a more ‘targeted’ and therefore more profitable approach, Bishop has allowed the council to withdraw PC 78 with its unpopular 3 x 3 units. But, subject to his directive that any change ‘must enable the same or more capacity for development as PC78’. So we can safely assume the numbers will be at least as much as currently proposed — probably more.
So with at least 3.5 million dwellings real and potential, at, according to census figures, 2.5 persons per dwelling, this means Auckland’s population under central government dictate, and without any consultation with Aucklanders, is expected to increase from the current 1.656 million to a potential almost 9 million people! And this despite a multi-billion infrastructure deficit! Madness!
Bishop’s reasoning is profoundly flawed. As the Character Coalition’s John Burns points out, an oversupply approach would work in the banana market but not the property market – as land, unlike ripening bananas, can be and is held back from the market. The extraordinary increase in potential dwellings enabled first by the Unitary Plan in 2013 and then PC 78 and MDRS in 2022 has not made any discernible dent in the affordability of houses.
Unlike Christchurch City Councillors who in 2022 effectively told the government to ‘bugger off’, Auckland Council continues to actively facilitate this. Moreover, its planners are now manipulating the public transport device of ‘walkable catchments’, extended by 50% from the recommended ‘800m on flat ground’ to 1200m, eg, up College Hill. This to enable developers to reach into the desirable northern slopes of St Marys and Herne Bays. The objective to replace a unique historic townscape of beautiful historic villas with walls of 15 storey, 50m high apartment towers, with 6 storey blocks almost everywhere else. Yet council has no plans to complete separation of sewage from stormwater here for 15 years. Thankfully Ponsonby and Grey Lynn are still largely spared — so far (the latter as a result of an AUP intensification exchange which I won with the support of then Mayor Len Brown in 2013).
Rather than solving the problem of housing affordability, the replacement of one bad plan with an arguably even worse plan, is all about maximising the developer sector profits, while wrecking the amenity, stealing the views and often the sun of existing residents. When will the Mayor and council stop kowtowing to out of touch and out of depth ministers in Wellington and the special interest lobbyists, and stand up for Auckland and its long-suffering ratepayers? (MIKE LEE)
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