Housing accord a small but welcome step

THERE’S something badly wrong with Wellington’s housing market. One international survey calls the city’s housing stock ‘‘severely unaffordable’’. Paying a typical mortgage in the city costs nearly twothirds of the median weekly pay packet, according to official estimates. The city has a shortfall of 3800 dwellings.

All of this is causing stress and anger in the community. Buying a house used to be a possibility for most families on a single income; now it is a stretch with two earners.

The housing accord signed this week by the Government and Wellington City Council is therefore a welcome step, even if its likely impact remains hazy.

The accord allows for faster consenting in ‘‘special housing areas’’. This means fewer chances for people to object to new buildings.

Likely areas include the fringes of Churton Park, and parts of Johnsonville, Kilbirnie, Adelaide Rd and the central city.

Developers hamstrung by local regulations and long consent hearings, the theory goes, will be freed up to launch new building projects.

Hopefully that is what happens: the city needs more homes now. Talk of a denser ‘‘spine’’ from Johnsonville to Newtown has been going on for nearly a decade without much effect. If the accord pushes some developments in those areas along, it will be worthwhile.

Yet no-one should get carried away. As much as politicians trumpet targets for ‘‘7000 new houses’’, they won’t build them; that’s up to developers. Regulations are already quite relaxed in the likely special areas. And council advice suggests most local developers do not value this scheme much – it won’t be enough to ‘‘incentivise them to release land and build houses more quickly’’.

Instead, developers apparently tell the council, ‘‘that to encourage development at the scale sought, incentives would also be welcomed’’. How surprising – the developers would like subsidies. The council is now mooting reductions in ‘‘development contributions’’, the levies that usually fund new infrastructure.

A logic can be discerned here: the city needs houses, the city ought to pay for the parks and pipes and roads that will help get them built. The council has a list of demands it would likely require in return – medium-density, green, affordable houses.

Yet such a bargain quickly gets very muddy. Council subsidies, and shopping lists for new houses, are a far cry from cutting red tape. They could go to projects that would have happened anyway, simply lining developers’ pockets. They could privilege housing projects that buyers don’t want.

The housing crisis has many root causes. The challenges are varied. New ‘‘greenfield’’ developments in outlying suburbs need to be attractive enough to buyers. New ‘‘brownfield’’ and infill developments need to overcome the yelps of existing locals. And all new developments need proper infrastructure, including decent public space, so they don’t become ghettos.

It’s clear by now that a denser, cheaper city isn’t going to materialise as things stand. The new accord is a small step towards making it happen.