Politics of housing is changing – albeit slowly

‘Buying a second house and renting it out is a bit like dismantling a tree twig by twig, to build yourself a giant nest.’’ This line, from James Brown, is part of a collection of New Zealand poems called More than a Roof, and it sums up some of the political sentiment from last week.

A social issue is not likely to be solved in a hurry when the art and literature being produced around it continues to get better, while the headlines just get worse. Brown says he was inspired to write the poem after trying to get a landlord to patch up a series of holes on the exterior of a house, and his landlord apparently replied: ‘‘But you don’t live on the outside.’’

If Brown’s poem doesn’t take your fancy, you could try any number of other works. Indeed, you need not limit yourself to New Zealand. Rosie ,a 2018 Irish movie, shows the downward spiral a person’s life can take when they can’t find stable housing. Part of it was filmed in an emergency accommodation motel, something which is now part of our own housing landscape. While the crew were filming a scene at reception, they saw real-life families file through, bags packed, ready to move to another hotel for the night.

Last week Stuff had a look at National leader Christopher Luxon’s property portfolio, the most extensive of an MP in the current Parliament. Over the past year his portfolio has accrued capital gains in excess of his salary while he was chief executive of Air New Zealand. His defenders say all of this was just the politics of envy at work. After all, it’s not as if Luxon gave himself those property gains.

However, it would also be misleading to see the accrual of these gains as a sign of financial genius. Policy decisions from governments of both stripes have likely done more to fatten Luxon’s property portfolio than he did.

Back when Key came to power, house prices were nearly six times income; today they are at nearly eight times – the highest imbalance in 18 years. These levels of unaffordability have been seen the world over. The prescription for solving them is well traversed, but rarely followed.

Internationally, cities are driving economic growth, but there is a shortage of land. Those which can provide more land through either ‘‘upzoning’’ existing land – allowing more dense developments – or providing more on the outskirts tend to do better in the affordability stakes.

A McKinsey report from as far back as 2014 identifies ‘‘unlocking’’ land supply as ‘‘the most critical step in providing affordable housing’’, but the problem is location. Expand too far and the extra housing will have little impact on the supply, or affordability, because commuting takes too long.

Around the world, various political movements, some led by a growing cohort of millennial or zoomer renters (termed Yimbys for ‘‘Yes In My Backyard’’), are trying to dismantle policies that prevent new building in the right locations. A lot of these onerous rules have their origins in attempts to make communities unaffordable, or lock out particular groups from being able to move in.

IIt would be misleading to see the accrual of [property] gains as a sign of financial genius.

n the United States, single-house rules first came into place in Berkeley, California, where developer Duncan McDuffie saw them as a way to make housing so unaffordable that AfricanAmericans would not be able to live anywhere near his developments. He lobbied for local rules to stop anyone building an apartment block, or anything with more than one house on a section.

McDuffie had a history of housing discrimination: his developments routinely carried property covenants preventing people from onselling his houses to African-Americans. The new zoning rules effectively stopped them living on pieces of land he didn’t own too.

It is against this context that Labour and National have been trying to change some of the rules around densification, coming to an agreement to speed up and expand the national policy statement on urban development. However, the consensus is fast fraying. Stuff reported National was seeking to pare back some of the bill’s changes, while Newsroom reported both Labour and National were trying to outdo each other on how much they could water down the bill.

Meanwhile, in a Newshub interview, Luxon said he wanted house prices to stabilise, but not fall dramatically. All of this sounds less a case of aspiration, and more like a group of people jealously guarding their well-lobbied-for capital gains.

It was a vote-winner when most voters comfortably owned their own homes, but will it be as successful with the growing number of voters who do not?