Ardern tackles housing crisis
WELLINGTON - New Zealand’s ruling Labour Party promised to deliver more homes and replace a 30-year-old law blamed for high housing costs and impeding urban development, as it looked to tackle a hot election issue ahead of early voting starting on Saturday (today).
Labour would replace the Resource Management Act (RMA), and continue its plan to deliver more than 18,000 public houses by 2024, party leader and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a policy announcement yesterday.
“Overly restrictive planning rules are one of the causes of high house prices,” Ms Ardern said, adding she was determined to remove unnecessary barriers to the supply of land and infrastructure for housing.
New Zealand’s house prices have soared nearly 90 per cent over the past decade, analysts have said, because of an acute housing shortage of more than a 100,000 homes.
Successive governments have failed to ease the red tape around land approval, making land artificially scarce. For private developers the costs and consent process are significant hurdles, making properties unaffordable.
Ms Ardern’s flagship affordable housing project KiwiBuild also faltered and so far has just built about 600 homes, with about 1000 under construction.
The housing crisis is creating a policy headache for Ms Ardern as she seeks a second threeyear term. Opinion polls suggest she is on track for a comfortable win, though the opposition National Party has been clawing back support.