On these pages last week, Dr Jamie Hosking, a senior lecturer at the Auckland University Medical School specialising in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, criticised my call for the opening up of more land around Auckland to make housing more affordable.
He argued that "it's not the cost of building houses that is driving [housing] affordability woes, it's the cost of land", and went on to argue that building up rather than building out "requires no new land. Building two storeys instead of one doubles housing capacity and uses no additional land. The cost of land is divided by the number of storeys".
Of course Dr Hosking is right if the supply of land is fixed, as indeed it has been by council decision. But it doesn't have to be fixed. At the moment, less than 1 per cent of New Zealand's area is urbanised. We are one of the least densely populated countries in the world. The council has quite deliberately chosen to make land expensive.
And the consequences of that decision are disastrous, socially and economically.
It's disastrous socially because for most low and middle-income families, buying a house in Auckland is now not even remotely possible, and for those families who do make the attempt, it almost inevitably means both parents working outside the home. Most low and middle-income families can't even make the attempt, and often live in over-crowded, poor quality rental accommodation.
