Cambridge: Get ready for cheap infill housing
A leading developer says Cambridge residents need to get ready for infill housing.
While Hamiltonians are used to intensive housing it’s only a matter of time, a developer says, before townhouses become a part of Cambridge’s landscape too.
John Kenel, of Assured Property Investments, is seeking resource consent for his first high density housing project - seven two storey units - at 153 Taylor Street in Cambridge.
With the growing population and demand in Cambridge, Kenel says housing intensification needs to happen soon.
“It's just a matter of time, like fast forward 30 years, there will be townhouses all down that street. If not all townhouses, some smaller apartments too.”
In the 26 years Kenel has lived in Cambridge, he said the town had become “busier, better, and that's not going to stop any time soon”.
And housing was a key to make the town more inclusive, he said.
Cambridge needed people working in “resthomes, supermarkets, tyre mechanics, those coming to wash your house”, and Kenel said many worked for low wages.
“They're spending their day driving back and forth to Hamilton.
“Running a car is expensive, the depreciation on the value of the car, tyres, registration, fuel, parking and time away from your kids and away from education and whatever else you could be doing.
“It's a much bigger effect on, ‘I'll say, poor people’.
“New Zealand is very expensive today, so what are we going to do about it, are we just going to say ‘Hey, I'm all right, I've got my house in Cambridge and let's pull up the bridge. Let the poor people live in Hamilton’.”
Not only young but older people looking for low maintenance homes would also benefit from intensive housing.
“There's also people from different countries, many of them, don’t know anything about lawn or a garden.
“So there are a lot of people who would want townhouses in Cambridge, and it's also one of the only ways that I can think of to bring costs down a bit.”
While Taylor Street units would not be particularly affordable due to high design cost, the units would get more affordable if resource consenting was made simpler, Kenelsaid.
Kenel said the Taylor Street site was a perfect location for townhouses - “overlooking a green belt, beautiful park all the way along there, walk or bike to school, a seven minute bike ride from town”.
The developer said the best way to do infill housing was to draw a density restriction - compact housing near city and town centres and no buildings in the countryside. Kenel said there were over 300 houses in Cambridge for sale, including sections, and while there was a lot of choice, people couldn’t afford them because of high interest rates.
In Hamilton, council is focusing on enabling housing intensification through an urban growth strategy.
Councillor Anna Casey-Cox said a lot of focus was on infrastructure investment in the city centre so that it could be intensified.
“Part of the reason is that there is a huge demand for one or two bedroom type apartment living and it's not being met currently.”
Casey-Cox said people were looking at different ways of living and not just the more traditional “home on a quarter acre section” - which was out of reach for many.
Enabling intensification would help with a “better price point” for Hamiltonians.
Greenfield areas like Peacocke and Rototuna would still have houses with bigger sections.
While council was working to intensify the central city, Plan Change 12 would enable intensification in areas around other town centres too, Casey-Cox said.