Council ‘lottery’ around tiny home rules to be examined
In a housing and a cost of living crisis, a council rule that requires tiny homes and caravans to get resource consent needs to be looked at, says a Motueka councillor.
Last Thursday, the Tasman District Council agreed to workshop the Motueka Community Board’s recommendation that temporary housing be given 108 weeks before they are deemed a dwelling, rather than the current two months leeway in place.
Under the Tasman Resource Management Plan, vehicles, trailers, tents, caravans or boats are not buildings unless they have been lived in for two months.
After that, they are considered dwellings and trigger the building and construction rules in the TRMP, and may require resource consent.
But councillor Brent Maru, in an earlier interviewwith Stuff, pointed out that the cost of a resource consent wasn’t something that those living in that sort of accommodation could really afford, particularly in a cost of living crisis and a housing crisis.
Maru said some people had been moved on from their sites on the basis of the building code being applied.
However, council staff didn’t “drive around the district looking for people”, rather those in such accommodation came to council attention because of the complaint of a neighbour.
“If nobody complains, we just drive straight past it,“Maru told councillors.
“It’s an old rule, and it seems a little bit irrelevant if we can’t find alternative housing for people,” he said. “And we can’t.”
Council staff, in response to questions, said if the issue was dealt with via a plan change, that could take between six months and two years, with the potential for appeals.
Tasman mayor Tim King said the issue was a “major” one, with many hundreds of people living in accommodation that didn’t meet the definition of building or vehicle, or who were living in unconsented buildings that were clearly buildings.
“Many of [them] have chosen to do that out of either frustration, or the perception at least, that to do it formally, properly and through the process is so difficult, so hard, so time consuming, and so costly, that the only alternative left is to do it illegally.”
Whether these homes came to the attention of the council or not was a “lottery”, he said.
Central Government had a massive focus on the provision of housing, and both coalition partners had parts of their coalition agreements that related to the ability to build houses under 60m2, King said.
“If we don’t get to a point and proactively consider this, we will get some central Government solution which may or may not be good.”
This month, councillors, together with Golden Bay and Motueka communityboards, are to workshop the two month rule and “define the problem and the outcomes they are hoping to achieve”, a council report said.
A second workshop will then provide advice on options and recommended interventions.
Councillor Trindi Walker asked why the workshops had be to done behind closed doors.
King said it was most likely because they would involve changes to planning and legal processes.