Pioneering craft beer bar to close Not enough inner-city housing built: advocate

Building consent records for the last 30 years show Wellington’s increase in housing capacity is driven by the outer suburbs and the city centre.

Inner-city suburbs, many of them constrained with character area restrictions which limit demolition of buildings or increasing density, are not providing enough homes, said Theodore Heeringa from City for People.

“We have the whole situation completely backwards,” he said. “We’re pushing housing further and further away from the city, and forcing people to live further away and travel further to get to work.”

City for People is an advocacy group pushing for more housing in the city, including more density.

The debate over character housing and density has taken centre-stage in Wellington recently, after the controversial recommendations issued by the Independent Hearing Panel on the Wellington City Council’s District Plan.

The plan will determine where housing can be built in Wellington for decades to come, but the panel recommendations have surprised local leaders and urban economists, who say the outcomes reached – which maintain large amounts of existing character protections in the city while zoning outer suburbs like Kilbirnie and Tawa for more density – do not provide enough housing.

Data provided by City for People, which was pulled from the StatsNZ website, shows the effect of maintaining character areas is clear on the number of building consents issued. The southern part of Mt Cook, for example, is mostly covered by a character area restricting density and demolition – it issued an average of four new building consents a year since 1990, compared with an average of 19 each year in the northern half of the suburb.

In the 10 years spanning from 2013 to 2023, just two years had any consents issued in the southern part of Mt Cook.

Thorndon and Kelburn averaged just three building consents a year, with Mount Victoria slightly higher at four a year.

“There’s basically very minimal new housing being built in the inner suburbs, such as Thorndon. And massive amounts of new housing is being built in Johnsonville,” said Heeringa.

From an environmental and infrastructure point of view, inner-city suburbs which are close to the places people work and shop should be seeing the most housing growth, as the most desirable places to live, Heeringa said. But those desirable suburbs were also where rental prices were the highest, making it unaffordable for many to live close to the city.

The numbers show northern suburbs like Johnsonville (15 a year), Woodridge (20 a year), and Churton Park (35 a year) have been doing most of the housing legwork for the city, with the suburbs closest to the city growing the least.

The exception is Te Aro and the city centre, where rules mostly allow density and apartment buildings, which led to the most dramatic increases in housing. Dixon St East, for example, averaged 56 consents a year, Wellington Central 43 and Vivian St 50.

Heeringa said there was nothing wrong with more housing being built in Johnsonville or Churton Park, and City for People supported that too.

“It’s just that they shouldn’t only be built there. And they shouldn’t be built at a higher rate than in the inner city.”

“We’re pushing housing further and further away from the city ...”

Theodore Heeringa

City for People