Brooke van Velden: Enduring solutions for housing

Every new development involves costs to existing ratepayers to provide new roads, water, and sewerage connections. Photo / Alex Burton

OPINION:

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the recent local body elections it’s that New Zealanders are sick of centralisation. Over the past few years, Kiwis have seen the Government come for their polytechs, their water assets, their healthcare, and their planning rules. You name it, the central government wants to control it.

The problem is that all of these attempts at centralisation have ended up abject failures, one size fits all solutions do not work and unsurprisingly ratepayers just want them to get their beaks out of their business.

Local elections gave ratepayers an opportunity to voice this desire for change, and many of the successful candidates were elected on a promise of more local control and less forced change.

Housing was one of the major issues that voters were exercised about, and where there was immense dissatisfaction with the Government’s actions. Everyone can accept there is a significant housing shortage in New Zealand, what is causing frustration is the lack of enduring solutions being proposed to fix it.

Labour and National teamed up to proudly announce their solution of unbridled intensification. Councils and ratepayers have roundly rejected it because it changes councils’ bespoke planning laws with no thought to the needs of the area. It also doesn’t address the problem that is preventing houses from being built. If it was a matter of zoning, the problem would already be solved.

Labour was elected to fix housing because National failed. Now they have failed as well, but that’s politics. The real problem is not just that young New Zealanders cannot afford homes, the whole Kiwi dream no longer works

The problem is actually infrastructure. It’s expensive. But it’s not impossible.

Every new development involves costs to existing ratepayers to provide new roads, water, and sewerage connections. These costs act as a disincentive for councils to approve new houses and subdivisions.

The only time you get prompt service from a council is when they’re issuing a parking ticket. They’ll come to you, anywhere, anytime, because there’s money in it. Imagine how many consents they’d issue if there was money in it for them?

This is the idea behind my Member’s Bill, which is due to be debated in Parliament soon. It would share 50 per cent of the GST revenue from new residential buildings with councils. Providing them with both the incentive to consent and the resources to deal with new housing. Initially, this would be offset by repurposing the Housing Acceleration Fund, in the long term it would share approximately $1.4 billion per year for local infrastructure.

Currently, councils have to come cap in hand to the Government and hope to get a grant for infrastructure from the Housing Accelerator Fund. The problem with this is it means the Central Government essentially has total control over what projects get the go-ahead and which get put on the scrap heap.

The Government shouldn’t be picking and choosing winners, and it should get its fingers out of the pie. Councils should be allowed to set plans that work for the local community and plan the infrastructure for it.

This is a far better solution than Labour and National’s divisive Medium Density Residential Standard (MDRS), which means someone can build a three-story building 1m from your boundary with no design standards. It could mean floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor looking into your living room, with no thought for existing homeowners.

Much like Three Waters, these housing intensity changes look set for the scrap heap. Councils have rejected them and want a better approach.

Act is providing an enduring solution. Without more infrastructure, there won’t be more houses in total, they’ll just be in different places. We don’t need more central planning and dictates; we need incentives to consent to more developments. That’s what our GST-sharing policy does.

Brooke van Velden, MP, is the deputy leader of the Act Party.