New mayor reveals radical housing plan

Campbell Barry is looking to take a radically different approach to Lower Hutt’s housing crisis – an approach one councillor has already likened to KiwiBuild and is warning the cost to ratepayers would be high.

The new Hutt City mayor is promising to ‘‘rein in’’ council property firm Urban Plus and to double the number of councilowned social housing units.

On the campaign trail, Barry promised to end corporate welfare and opposed the council becoming involved in commercial property developments.

He was referring to the council subsidising a hotel, buying a building in High St and waiving $29 million worth of fees for developers building apartments.

Barry said Urban Plus would need a new statement of intent focusing on social, rather than commercial, objectives. ‘‘The reins will be drawn in on Urban Plus.’’

Barry also wants a more regional approach to housing, with all councils and Housing NZ working

together.

Hutt South National MP Chris Bishop welcomed the new approach, saying that with the housing stats for Lower Hutt getting worse every month, something had to change.

‘‘I think it is broadly the right approach. I agree with reining in Urban Plus; if the council is going to have a housing division it should focus on social housing.’’

The council should not be exposing ratepayers to the ‘‘risk’’ involved in property development, he said. A more regional approach to housing is also overdue, although he said he would still like to see the city council do a lot more to free up land.

Urban Plus chief executive Craig Walton has no problems with Barry’s ideas.

Urban Plus uses the profits from commercial developments to pay for social housing and would like to build more.

It has about 100 social housing units planned over the next year and he planned to sit down with Barry to discuss his ideas.

Long-standing councillor Chris Milne said changing the way Urban Plus operated carried significant risk. ‘‘The council can make almost no impact on housing in the Hutt without spending a fortune of ratepayers’ money.’’

Milne said building houses was best left to central government. ‘‘What is being proposed in the Hutt Valley is the Hutt City Council version of KiwiBuild.’’

Labour list MP Ginny Andersen was ‘‘fully supportive’’ of reining in Urban Plus and had lobbied council to focus more on social housing. ‘‘We need Urban Plus to help people in Lower Hutt get into houses.’’