Editorial: Yes, we need houses, but not at the expense of our food bowls

Auckland can't afford to lose prime food-growing areas like Pukekohe to housing. Photo / Paul Estcourt

EDITORIAL

The Government’s plan to flood the market with development land will be welcome news for developers and first-home buyers trying to get a leg up into the housing market.

But there should also be a note of caution when it comes to building on land which is needed to grow food.

Areas like Auckland’s Pukekohe offer rich, deep volcanic soil that has supported generations of market gardeners and played a key role in feeding the nation.

Potatoes, onions, tomatoes and a vast array of vegetables have been grown there. But slowly urban sprawl has been encroaching more and more on it.

Likewise, fruit-growing areas like Massey and Kumeū on Auckland’s northwestern fringe have been eaten up by housing developments.

With record levels of new immigrants coming into the country, there is no denying that New Zealand needs more houses for those people and those stuck on public housing waiting lists.

Yesterday, Housing Minister Chris Bishop unveiled a slew of changes to New Zealand’s planning laws that will see the Government abolish councils’ ability to set fixed urban-rural boundaries and will abolish powers that let councils mandate balconies or minimum floor area sizes for developments.

That means the market, not councils, will set minimum sizes for apartments. Shoe-box apartments were the result of few restrictions on apartment sizes in the past. Bishop has argued that shoebox apartments are better than people living in a car or an emergency housing motel room.

Loose planning rules also gave way to the leaky housing crisis in the 2000s, which cost the country around $12 billion (according to PwC’s 2009 report) and, some say, contributed to fewer houses being built in the decade after as resources were put into fixing up houses.

Building outside rural-urban boundaries is easier for developers who scrape off the dirt and cut it up into sections – but who pays when it comes to providing the infrastructure to serve those houses?

New water and sewerage pipes, roading and rail connections are costly and ratepayers already have a large burden in paying for existing infrastructure to be maintained and upgraded.

Existing land within the urban limits should be developed first, especially on sites near public transport and main arterial roads. Central city leafy suburbs are ripe for redevelopment, even though many of those who live there want them maintained as the status quo.

Central city intensification should be prioritised over urban sprawl, which also clogs motorways as people have to drive from further and further away in order to afford a home in the same city where they work.

Developing houses on food-growing land in the city limits could risk solving one problem only to create another.

Scientists have warned for years that populations here and around the world are growing so fast that it will curtail countries’ ability to feed their own people.

It may sound improbable, but they warn that urban sprawl could limit even New Zealand’s ability to be self-sufficient in vegetables, especially if Auckland keeps expanding at a seemingly inexorable rate.

The Government should take heed of this when changing any rules.