Herald on Sunday editorial: A slew of solutions for our housing woes. Which suits you?

Flatting or living at home into your 40s is not the answer for most people. Photo / Doug Sherring

Editorial

So-called Nimbys should look away now.

As our feature on the housing shortage explains, there are many ways to provide more homes for our rising population but not all of them will be universally popular.

Auckland Council's Unitary Plan, which allows for low-rise apartments and terraced housing in many areas, is a good start but supporters should not underestimate the genuine fears held by Nimbys (Not In My Back Yard-ers), whose opposition is hardly surprising.

Most people who buy a house with a section and live surrounded by other houses with green space want to preserve that lifestyle and the value of their property - even if some acknowledge this dream is becoming unattainable for many other New Zealanders, including their own children.

The gradual disappearance of front and back yards in large chunks of the city looks inevitable, but so does a vigorous debate over the details.

Other potential solutions to the housing crisis involve a similar clash of self interest and the greater good.

Co-operative housing, popular in parts of Europe, may work with a group of like-minded people but local experience with body corporates suggests getting 20 households to agree on even basic repairs can be difficult.

Flatting or living at home into your 40s is not the answer for most people, either - there is a reason for that bank ad about the nightmare of pensioner flatmates.

And living with grandparents, either in one house or using a granny flat, is a complex decision, often determined by culture as much as finances. It will suit some families, but not everyone wants to live with their parents or children their whole lives.

The most realistic scenario is to ramp up prefabricated housing, which deserves to shake off its shoddy reputation.

No one thinks twice about buying a prefabricated car, so why do we still insist on slow, expensive custom-made housing? The new Government can take a strong lead here by using high quality prefab housing to build the tens of thousands of homes urgently needed in Auckland.

That would give the industry enough scale to lower the cost of building materials and shift the balance of new homes towards smaller one and two-bedroom units, instead of the four and five bedroom mansions currently favoured by one-man builders looking to maximise their profits on each job.

That in turn would allow many older homeowners to downsize, freeing up their larger homes to families who need the extra space.