Twyford says housing ministry ‘will be frugal’

The minister establishing a new housing ministry may not consider its advice if it doesn’t suit his policy settings.

Housing and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford yesterday announced the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development with a view to providing advice on KiwiBuild. The ministry will be dedicated to advising the Government on policy and its plans to make homes more affordable and reduce homelessness. It had no targets yet, Twyford said.

When asked if he would commit to considering all advice the new ministry brought to him, even if he did not agree with it, Twyford said advice from officials to politicians was ‘‘just that’’.

‘‘They’re not decisions.

‘‘We [politicians] are elected to make the decisions. Sometimes you agree, sometimes you disagree.’’

Twyford called Treasury officials ‘‘kids’’ last month when they released figures halving the impact they expected KiwiBuild to have on residential construction.

From August, the ministry would take in units and staff from within three other Government ministries, using existing funding from their respective agencies.

It would begin full operation from October 1.

Twyford said it would take $8 million to set up. He would not put a deadline on its setting up.

‘‘We are intending to be very frugal about this. We’re bringing together people who are already doing this work in other places.’’

A chief executive and a ‘‘small team’’ of officials would lead the ministry of ‘‘about 200’’ employees, he said. Other than that, no extra staff would be employed but that could change over time, he said.

The ministry would encompass the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) housing and urban policy functions, its KiwiBuild unit and the Community Housing Regulatory Authority, Treasury’s monitoring of Housing NZ and the Ta¯maki Redevelopment Company.

The Ministry of Social Development would keep its function assessing and managing people’s need for public housing; however, its policy for emergency, transitional and public housing would become part of the new ministry.

The fewest number of staff and funding would come from Treasury.

No key performance indicators had been set out for the new ministry, he said. ‘‘But, we will be working on that shortly’’. Its first priority would be delivering the KiwiBuild agenda to build 100,000 affordable homes, he said.

National housing spokeswoman Judith Collins said her party would disestablish the ministry and return its functions back to their respective agencies if it did not have a ‘‘significant impact’’ on housing stock.

When asked if she agreed with private-sector commentators who said the ministry would provide a clearer line of sight for policy setting, Collins said ‘‘none of it’s going to house people’’.

Property Council New Zealand chief executive Connal Townsend said the ministry’s focus on urban development was positive news for property developers who wanted to build communities, not just houses.

It would not solve the housing crisis, but it would help to fix it, he said. Current housing policy was an ‘‘absolute shambles,’’ he said.

To build homes, developers had to have deep enough pockets to go through the time-consuming process of acquiring and buying land and gaining resource management and building consent.

‘‘The problem is still not being tackled. The minister is right to try and concentrate some of his levers to try to deal with some of it.’’

The new ministry could get better policy across the table, especially by utilising the housing policy ‘‘intellectual grunt’’ within MBIE, Townsend said.

It was just a reshuffling of Crown staff and was not the primary topic of consultation with the private sector; however he had seen ‘‘glimmers’’ of the move coming since earlier in the year, he said.

‘‘This is a machinery of Government issue to manage its effectiveness.’’

ACT Party leader David Seymour said a new ministry would make the housing crisis worse.

Reforming the Resource Management Act to make it easier for the private sector to build homes was a better idea, he said.