Sign In / Register
Housing Minister Chris Bishop has this month announced his Going for Housing Growth policy which he says will flood the market with new homes. However, Local Government NZ is wondering how councils can afford it.
The policy is structured around three areas of change, or ‘pillars’, which government says will address the underlying causes of the housing supply shortage. These are: freeing up land for urban development, including removing “unnecessary planning barriers”; improving infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth and providing incentives for communities and councils to support growth.
The overall aim is to improving housing affordability by significantly increasing the supply of land that can be developed for housing, both inside and at the edge of urban areas.
This month, the government announced decisions on the first ‘pillar’, requiring councils to free up land for housing.
These changes will be implemented through amendments to the Resource Management Act and the National Policy Statement on Urban Development,
The changes include:
• Introducing housing growth targets introduced for Tier 1 and 2 councils, requiring them to enable 30 years of feasible housing capacity in their district plans, using ‘high’ population growth projections.
• New central government tools to monitor council compliance and a mandate to take action where there is unjustified non-compliance.
• Prohibiting councils from imposing rural-urban boundary lines in planning documents (but they can still have rurally zoned land).
• Investigating options to require councils to plan for 50 years of growth in their Future Development Strategies (up from 30) and be more responsive to private plan changes.
Formal consultation on the changes will occur early next year, with the first pillar requirements expected to be in place by the middle of next year.
Further decisions, including on Pillars 2 and 3, will be made later this year and next year.
Local Government NZ president Sam Broughton is quoted in industry publication Infranews as saying that while he welcomes the government’s commitment to housing growth, the lack of support to make it happen is a major concern for councils.
“Councils want more housing growth,” he says. “However, the logjam has happened because councils are not resourced to support the level of growth that we need. If we are serious about solving the housing crisis, we must change how growth is paid for.
“A 50 percent share of the GST revenue on new builds – as signalled in the Coalition Agreement – is a good place to start and it was disappointing not to see that commitment today. Rates alone simply can’t cut it.
“We are concerned at the increasing central direction on planning that we’ve seen through successive governments, especially given this government’s commitment to localism.
“If the government is serious about getting housing built, any changes should have both political consensus and buy-in from local government, otherwise we risk going through this all over again with the next change of government. Flip-flopping only costs councils and ratepayers.”
Info: www.hud.govt.nz/our-work/going-for-housing-growth-programme/
