Plan eyes total prefabrication
The country is getting closer to importing complete prefabricated houses, as well as seeing major local and overseas companies setting up giant house-building factories in New Zealand, Housing Minister Phil Twyford says.
Speaking at the Co-Lab conference of prefabricated housing suppliers in Auckland, Twyford acknowledged KiwiBuild’s slow progress, but defended the KiwiBuild plan.
‘‘The icon of the Labour Party, Michael Joseph Savage, when attacked for building state houses in the face of the post-Depression housing crisis, said: ‘We do not claim perfection, but we do claim a considerable advance on what’s been done in the past’,’’ he said.
‘‘We can’t yet claim a considerable advance but we are making steady progress.’’
He said the aim of KiwiBuild was to deliver 100,000 modest, affordable houses over 10 years.
Twyford said KiwiBuild could not be delivered without prefabricated housing.
A shortlist of 44 established local and overseas prefabricated housing manufacturers, which could begin large-scale manufacture of prefab homes, had been drawn up.
‘‘In the third quarter of this year, we would like to enter into commercial dialogue with an even shorter shortlist of firms, with the process culminating in negotiations for supply of off-site manufacturing at scale.’’
Twyford expected this would result in both importing prefabricated homes as well as the establishment of large-scale factories in New Zealand.
The Government’s plan was to create a Housing and Urban Development Authority by combining KiwiBuild, Housing NZ and the Hobsonville Land Company, which had successfully developed a former air force base on the outskirts of Auckland.
It would have an end-to-end grip on planning for housing as well as delivering large-scale development projects like that at Hobsonville Point.
These powers include the ability to bring together parcels of land to create large masterplanned developments, which could foreshadow the increased use of the Public Works Act to buy land for housing development.