Phil Twyford talks about the housing and rental crisis affecting Tauranga. Photo/John Borren.
Phil Twyford talks about the housing and rental crisis affecting Tauranga. Photo/John Borren.
Tauranga has earned the "silver medal" for housing unaffordability, Labour MP Phil Twyford says.
But Tauranga MP Simon Bridges says the Government has plans to deal with the issue.
Mr Twyford spoke to the Bay of Plenty Times in Tauranga yesterday about how the city was the "silver medallist" in housing unaffordability, second only to Auckland.
Simon Bridges
"Tauranga definitely has a housing problem. First home buyers are feeling the squeeze, particularly with the Reserve Bank's high loan-to-value ratio lending restrictions, which has shunted people out of the housing market."
Mr Twyford said with a "tight" housing market like this, with rising costs, it put downward pressure into substandard housing and homelessness, and created a "terrible crisis" for families.
A particular problem in Tauranga was the covenants developers placed on people building new homes.
"They're a legal obligation for people to build a house of a certain size, out of a certain material, must have a double garage etcetera. They're designed to keep the values of those properties up.
"They're good for the developers, but not so good for the people who need affordable housing."
Housing has become unaffordable for many in the Tauranga area, says Labour spokesperson for housing Phil Twyford.
Rents have gone up 9 per cent across the country according to Trade Me and Mr Twyford said because landlords were paying top dollar for properties, they were pushing up rents to make a return on their investment.
He said the Government was only "tinkering around the edges" of the problem and was not taking bold steps to sort the housing market out.
Mr Twyford said building more houses according to Labour's Kiwibuild policy, which calls for 10,000 new homes to be built each year over 10 years, would bring prices down by flooding the market.
National's special housing areas policy would be a useful short-term fix, but was not a lasting solution to the problem.
Tauranga definitely has a housing problem.
Mr Bridges said there was no question Tauranga's houses were more expensive than some other parts of New Zealand.
"The simple reason for that is Tauranga and the Western Bay is an extremely desirable place to live and will always be so."
Mr Bridges said the Government recognised there were housing supply issues and had created a "programme of reform" to deal with this, including putting housing accords in place to build 1000 affordable homes in the Tauranga/Western Bay region, assisting 90,000 first-home buyers nationally with the KiwiSaver Starter Homes Scheme from April 1, and significant reforms to the Resource Management Act.
New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell said a housing crisis was pending.
