Experts tackle housing crisis
Blue-sky thinking is needed to overcome the housing crisis, but people locked out of the property market are finding their own solutions.
Some are filling their backyards with transportable cabins.
Housing and Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford on Saturday appointed three independent experts – economist Shamubeel Eaqub, University of Otago Professor of Public Health Philippa Howden-Chapman and the Salvation Army’s Alan Johnson – to lead an independent stocktake of the housing crisis.
Their report is due before Christmas. ‘‘This report will help the Government refine and focus that work where it is most needed,’’ Twyford said on Saturday when announcing the appointments.
The rise in house prices and shortage of rental properties have seen the demand for mobile cabins shoot up, Just Cabins franchisee Fenton Peterken said.
Just Cabins is one of a number of cabin providers on the market.
‘‘We’ve seen increased demand for a lot of reasons,’’ Peterken said, ‘‘certainly [because of] rising house prices, the LVRs [loan to value ratios enforced by banks], increased rents, increased population. And there has been a flow-on effect from earthquakes as well.’’
Peterken rents out the insulated cabins. They’re only a temporary solution, he said.
He’s delivered them to where people have been staying in overcrowded conditions – sleeping in the lounge or in tents in the backyard.
‘‘Since I took over the business seven years ago, we’ve quadrupled our business,’’ Peterken said.
Twyford appointee Howden-Chapman has seen cabins and converted shipping containers pop up in Auckland and Wellington and said they are an indication of overcrowding.
‘‘People are stuck in a position where they don’t have anywhere else to go to and they are trying to lower rent per person,’’ Howden-Chapman said.
There is a lot of sense in that, she said, but there are health and mental health issues that need to be considered.
‘‘There is, probably, still just one toilet in the house. There is, probably, still just one kitchen in the house. So it’s putting pressure on the infrastructure and, most particularly, the social infrastructure.’’
Twyford’s stocktake will look at homelessness, the state of the rental market, the decline of home ownership and more.
According to the Trade Me Property Rental Index released in November, the number of rental properties to choose from dropped 50 per cent in the past year.
It’s a drop that Trade Me Property spokesman Nigel Jeffries said he’d never seen before. He also pointed to LVRs – bank lending restrictions on first-home buyers and investors – which meant fewer could get into the market and were renting for longer.
Waikato Property Investor Association president and Harcourts salesman Daryl Fisher agreed that the rental market is in serious strife.
‘‘The rents have certainly been climbing for the last nine months, but I would expect them to be aggressively climbing in the next 12 months,’’ Fisher said.
And PrefabNZ chief executive officer Pamela Bell said new thinking on the housing crisis is desperately needed.
Her nonprofit industry association has more than 240 members across the design and construction sector.
‘‘When it comes to the type of housing affordability issues we’re in, we really have to consider all solutions,’’ Bell said.
‘‘Instead of thinking that the one path to a home is home ownership by a single family through a single mortgage, we’ve just got to develop other solutions.’’