Goldilocks and the three options
When Goldilocks broke into the Three Bears’ house to find the best bed to nap in, she maybe should have counted her blessings that the only issue that came up was a bear attack, rather than the thorny intricacies of Government legislation and council plan changes.
To put it bluntly, Nelson needs more housing. To enable that, the council first needs to implement a housing plan change. But there are three potential ways to do that, and at an environment and climate committee meeting last week, the councillors instead decided to delay the decision to a later meeting.
The first option was fast but uncertain, the last one was familiar but slow, and the middle one was somewhere in between, but they weren’t sure which one was just right.
The waiting list for public housing was up to 447 in June last year, and that number has been trending upwards. Last year, Nelson was forecast to have a potentially 864-dwelling long-term shortfall in housing.
Nelson Mayor Rachel Reese herself has highlighted the need for more housing in Nelson, and quickly, multiple times.
She said it was ‘‘probably the biggest, most significant decision that council’s going to make in this term’’. And then she asked for it to be delayed another month.
So why couldn’t the councillors make a call?
A council committee needed to pick the best pathway forward out of three. And just like Goldilocks picking her bed, each option comes with benefits and drawbacks.
In this case, elected members had to pick a pathway for their housing plan change – the method by which it will, eventually, make intensification easier for developers to achieve by changing the rules to allow for medium-density housing options (think townhouses, multi-unit buildings up to three storeys high, and reduced parking requirements).
One option had a lot going for it, being the lowest-cost option to the council and potentially taking effect in under a year once the ball is rolling.
The next-fastest option could take double the time, and would likely cost more, and the third option would take even longer and cost even more.
So one option is fast and cheaper, and the others are slower and more costly. What’s the hold-up?
You can probably hear the ‘‘but’’ coming already ...
One big ‘‘but’’ for the fast, low-cost option is that it relies on legislation so new that councils around the country still haven’t quite grappled with its full implications.
There are also trade-offs for the speed – a big one being that the council might not have to spend a huge amount of time on coming up with its new plan, since picking this option would also mean picking the medium-density residential standards set out by the Government.
There is a little wriggle-room in that – the standards don’t come into effect where ‘‘qualifying matters’’ apply, like heritage, but this is where the newness of the legislation leaves some room for uncertainty.
Another ‘‘but’’ is that there is a reason why these processes are usually slow, and this one isn’t.
Usually plan changes follow a pretty strict process. The council has to put together its proposal, get public submissions, have a hearing – usually with an independent hearings panel – incorporate that feedback into its proposal, notify the public, and then often get tied up in lengthy appeals before the full plan change comes into effect.
The process for the faster, lower-cost option is faster and lower cost because it does away with that last step – there are no rights for appeal in this process, and once the plan change is notified, it has immediate legal effect.
So surely the middle way is the winner?
This was the path staff initially recommended, and it’s not hard to see why.
It’s an established pathway that other councils have used before, it doesn’t have to adhere to the strict new mediumdensity standards (but can pick and choose ones that suit), and it allows for some appeal without giving free rein to the potentially glacial process.
However, this option would take potentially twice as long as the fast option – up to 24 months – and it depends on how quickly the ministry for the environment picks up its end of the process. Other councils trying to use this second system have been left waiting for up to six months. When the council has been making rumblings about fixing the housing crisis for years already, even a delay of a single year when a faster option is on the table was enough to give pause to elected members – literally, in this case, since they paused the decision for about six weeks.
Part of that pause was to give council staff time to communicate with the ministry for the environment to get a clearer idea of how long it would take to get things up and running.
There would also be some delay on the other end of the process, as unlike the first option on the table there are some limited rights to appeal the plan change or parts of it before it comes into effect.
Though this was the recommended option, the councillors instead decided to go for less haste and (hopefully) more speed by waiting to find out more before forging ahead.
But what about the third option?
The last and probably least likely option on the table is the tried-and-true method that has been used many times before.
In this case, slow and steady probably won’t win the race, though the elected members haven’t quite taken it off the table yet.
This pathway is the slowest and most expensive of them all, with a more than two-year lag between starting the plan change process and seeing it come into full legal effect.
Both the speed and expense come largely from the fact that this process is the one that gives full right of appeal, which could see the council bogged down in legal proceedings on more controversial aspects of the plan change for potentially years.
But isn’t the right of appeal important? What if I don’t like the plan?
Yes, generally, but also no, not necessarily, seems to be the answer that the council has landed on.
The mayor herself noted in the meeting that those most in need of housing were also those least likely to be represented in the appeals process, calling it a ‘‘money-driven game’’.
All three options do have a public submission process attached, and all three would have a hearing panel process (with some variation on exactly how that panel works), so it’s not like there would be no input from the community under any particular option.
However, the writing is on the wall – people need housing, and both the Government and the Nelson City Council want to enable intensification to happen, and as quickly as reasonably possible.
The new legislation underpinning the first option is attempting to take the bite out of the bark of NIMBY neighbours who want to have their cake and eat it too – and the Nelson City Council looks like it’s leaning in a similar direction.