KEY POINTS:
Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis is promoting the creation of a new town to provide housing for people on low-to-middle incomes.
Sir Barry is championing the idea of a "comprehensively planned, designed and developed" new town for families who can't afford their own homes.
He said the onus was on local, regional and central governments to create a regional development corporation which would buy land beyond metropolitan Auckland limits, somewhere between Wellsford and Mercer. The land would be bought at a value that reflected its rural zoning and would be kept in public ownership in perpetuity.
"It's my belief that by controlling the cost of the land and through comprehensive planning and developing the new town in a strategic location well beyond metropolitan urban limits, we could provide reasonably priced housing," said Sir Barry.
"The key to it is the public ownership of the land resource, thereby avoiding this huge escalation element which is putting housing beyond the reach of most people."
He said the inability of many families to afford their own homes was affecting the social, mental and economic health of the region's people.
Half of all families living in the Manukau area earned on average $30,000 net a year, effectively excluding them from buying their own homes.
Sir Barry said he had not yet presented the idea to the inquiry into housing affordability being conducted by Parliament's commerce committee.
