Let’s join forces to say yes to more housing
This week I stood with National’s Leader and Government ministers to announce a joint housing policy we have worked with Labour to develop. Why?
New Zealand is facing a housing emergency. You have a right to expect your representatives will work constructively together to address it.
Our housing problems are welldocumented: some of the most unaffordable houses in the developed world, rapidly declining rates of home ownership, more than 23,000 people waiting for a state home and the Government spending more than a million dollars a day to put people up in motels.
The gap between incomes and house prices is wider than it’s ever been – in 2001 the average house was worth around three times the average income, today that ratio is 8:1.
Here in Wellington, the value of the average house has increased by more than $300,000 in the past year alone, hitting $1.2 million, compared to $730k four years ago.
This has made it excruciatingly difficult for young people to gather the deposit for a home.
It has also put upward pressure on rents, which have leapt to an average of $580 per week, meaning renters are paying $150 more in rent each week than they were four years ago.
This is a recipe for transitory families, growing inequality and divided communities. It is not the New Zealand I aspire to or that I want my children to inherit. Left unchecked it puts lie to the idea of New Zealand as an egalitarian property-owning democracy.
Yes, these problems have built up over successive governments. Yes, Labour has tried. It has banned foreign buyers, changed the tax treatment of rental properties and extended the bright line capital gains tax. It even promised 100,000 KiwiBuild homes. None of it has worked.
Through all of this National has argued we must remove the red tape that prevents more homes being built.
In January Judith Collins wrote to the prime minister offering to work with the Government on urgent RMA reforms to do that. We were delighted when, in late June, ministers took up the offer.
We have worked constructively since then on measures that, while not a silver bullet, will make a difference, with analysis suggesting they could result in up to 14,000 more homes being built in Wellington alone.
The changes will allow for more density in our major cities. They will also allow local councils to fast-track plan changes for greenfields housing. They will greatly enhance the right to build, reducing the circumstances in which people wanting to build new dwellings must contend with the cost, complexity and delays of the resource consent process.
It’s not a free-for-all. Developments will still need to comply with the Building Code, and there will be limits, so that, for example, no more than 50 percent of a section can be covered by buildings.
Councils will be able to prove the case for excluding areas from denser development – whether for heritage, environmental or other reasons.
Nothing in the Bill will force people to build more density. Those who prefer a traditional house with a big garden can be assured no one can make you demolish your home.
What these changes will do is allow Wellington to grow up and out as a city, with homes being built where people want to live and with a range of housing types to choose from including townhouses, apartments, tiny homes and granny-flats.
Some have said this could affect the character of their neighbourhood. I understand anxiety about rapid change and I assure you our advice is that change will be gradual.
Fundamentally I appeal to something I believe characterises Wellingtonians: a strong sense of community.
Our communities lose their character when people can’t afford to own their own home.
I think of primary schools facing dropping rolls because families simply can’t afford to live in their catchment. The endless stories of young people giving up on Wellington and moving overseas. The hundreds of people living in emergency accommodation, squeezed out of the private rental market.
There is more work to do to fix our housing woes, to better finance infrastructure, to deal with shortages of construction materials and workers, to encourage development.
I will be working hard to put forward good ideas on those issues and I won’t resile from holding the Government to account when its housing policies fail.
But this week’s bipartisan announcement is a step forward for all of us. It’s an historic commitment that will help put new rungs on the property ladder, placing it in reach of more people, and rebuilding hope for the next generation.
That’s why National and Labour joined forces to say yes to more housing this week. I invite you to do the same.