Kiwibuild ‘positive’ has reset industry – Fletcher chairman

Kiwibuild may have failed to hit its targets, but it has brought about a culture change in the building industry, according to Fletcher Building’s chairman.

‘‘It has focused the industry around affordable housing,’’ Bruce Hassall told Fletcher Building shareholders. ‘‘We are much more focused on affordable housing, and that’s a trend across the industry, and that’s one positive.

The Government scrapped its target to build 100,000 homes as part of Minister of Housing Megan Woods’ sweeping reset of the project in September.

It is now promising only to oversee the building of a ‘‘significant’’ number of new affordable homes, with monthly dashboards published to keep the public informed.

‘‘The housing crisis developed over decades and won’t be solved overnight,’’ Woods said at the reset. ‘‘We’ve made a good start across the wider housing portfolio but Kiwibuild isn’t working so we are changing it. When policies aren’t working we are honest about that and fix them.’’

Hassall acknowledged the Government had been criticised for failing to hits its Kiwibuild targets, but said the Kiwibuild policy had raised awareness in the building industry. ‘‘That’s come from the Kiwibuild initiative from the Government.’’

Fletcher Building was a major developer of new neighbourhoods, and in October opened a hi-tech prefabricated homes factory, able to churn out hundreds of homes a year, including apartments.

The Clever Core factory in Wiri in the industrial south of Auckland would produce the core structural components of a home in a factory environment, which could be trucked to a building site and assembled, with homes able to be put up and finished within six to 10 weeks.

There had been a surge in consenting numbers, especially in Auckland, where new consents were running at levels not seen since the 1970s.

Kiwibuild was not the only front on which Fletcher Building was engaged with the Government.

The NZX sharemarket-listed company, which is a staple of many Kiwisaver funds, was awaiting the outcome of negotiations over the future of the historic Ihuma¯tao site in Mangere.

Hassall said discussions with the Government about the future of Ihuma¯tao, where Fletcher Building had planned to build 480 homes, were ongoing. But, he said, the company’s board had been told to expect a resolution to the negotiations by the end of the year. low-rise

The next battle in the war against high-cost lenders is the fight for laws forcing debt collectors to agree to ‘‘affordable’’ repayment schedules for borrowers.

‘‘Debt collectors use tactics that amount to harassment as part of their collection practices,’’ law lecturer Victoria Stace, from Victoria University of Wellington, told a conference on financial capability in Auckland on Friday.

‘‘There is no law requiring them to enter into an affordable repayment schedule with the borrower.

‘‘The battle continues.’’ Speaking at Massey University’s Building Financially Capable Communities conference, Stace detailed the research she had done which helped national budgeting service Fincap persuade the Government to introduce interest rate and fee caps on high-interest lenders.

‘‘We have got interest rates down to around 300 per cent a year, and a ban on compounding interest, but that rate is still very high, there is likely to be scope for avoidance,’’ she said.

There was a dearth of research