Kerre Woodham: Did the intensification announcement allay your fears?

We thought we'd start with the housing densification or de-densification that was announced yesterday. We didn't really get a chance to talk about it despite the fact that yesterday when the Prime Minister was in for an hour, he gave us a bit of an announcement of an announcement. 

“Long story short is what Chris will announce is a significant reduction in the capacity, which means that then actually that pressure of intensifying our suburbs in Auckland goes away. And what we want to see is intensification happening in the right places. Over the CBD, the transport hubs, the town centres, we should be densifying and putting more intensification. So where would the density occur? Should occur in the CBD, in the town centres, in the transport hubs that we've got across the across Auckland City, but not in the suburbs.” 

Didn't have to wait very long for the actual announcement, because a few hours later, Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced sweeping changes to housing densification in Auckland, with dwelling capacity being slashed from 2 million homes to 1.6 million. The housing intensification will still go ahead near transport hubs, rail corridors, and the CBD. Chris Bishop said yesterday that the 2 million housing figure had become a red herring that transformed into a lightning rod. Basically, people felt that 2 million houses would be put up right next door to them. That was the kind of irrational thinking behind it. There were concerns about who would be there, what sort of housing developments would go there, where people would shop, how people would get to work, where people would go to school. They were legitimate concerns, but there was, I agree with Chris Bishop, that 2 million suddenly became 2 million people will be next door to me. And he said the changes made yesterday were a response to public feedback. Hamish Firth, who you will have heard on this show before, who is most excellent, who is an urban planner, who was stolen by the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning, said the changes announced by the Minister yesterday made sense. 

“What we've got to be very careful when you suddenly throw 2 million out there is you create paper capacity, but you're going to create community backlash, you're going to create land value distortion, and you're probably not going to create any extra homes, especially against the backdrop of what was a very well written Auckland Unitary Plan. At the end of the day, targets don't build houses, infrastructure and feasibility do. And what you'll find right now is a lot of high rise buildings are very expensive to build, and they only get built, as you're starting to see, in very high end areas where the developer can achieve a very high end outcome. So just because you can build to 50 doesn't mean many of these sites will or may, and I think that some thought has to go into that.”

Does this allay the fears you might have had about intensification of housing? Does the fact that the Government has listened show a government that is concerned and understands and appreciates the fears of well, many around the country, because what happens in Auckland quite often filters through to the rest of the country? That by being willing to listen, that shows, you know, a reasonable kind of a government. Labour was shouting about a u-turn and they've got it all wrong and they've had to backpedal. But a couple of texters yesterday, because I said to the Prime Minister yesterday, this just looks like you're looking after the voters in the leafy suburbs. And a couple of people from the leafy suburbs said it makes no sense to put people in areas where there is no transport hub, where there are no schools. And I think that's a perfectly valid point and I accept that. And when the PM said yesterday that you could pop up housing developments, you know, put 100 homes into an area without having to provide for transport, without having to provide for schools, there was no thought to it, you could just sell off the land and the council'd say, “Yeah, sure, you can turn that into a development," – that doesn't make sense either. There's got to be planning and forethought when you are putting in new homes. That's what will create a thriving community. Putting it around the transport hubs, great. Putting it in the CBD and the and the suburbs closest to the CBD, great. Watch new communities develop.  

Does that allay the fears that people had now? First home buyers, there have never been more of them right now, and that's pleasing. We never want to see the kind of rorting and speculation that we saw with housing prices, and an increase in supply will help mitigate that. And we don't want to see people stranded in the middle of nowhere in housing developments that have put a roof over their head but precious little else. So love to hear from you on this, especially if you had concerns at the time. Does this kind of tinkering with the plan, this kind of revisiting of the plan, is that a tick for the government to say, Okay, you took the feedback on, you listened," and does this make you perhaps less fearful of what housing intensification is going to look like, what providing homes for future New Zealanders looks like in the future. 

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