Housing Meeting

I attended another evening meeting, this time Cabinet Ministers, Paula Bennett and Nick Smith spoke about housing. More protesters but this time a police presence as well. As a point of interest, media reporting I saw in the following 24 hours was not a fair and reasonable reflection of what I experienced first-hand. On the Paul Henry Show it was reported both Ministers fluffed their words. I saw no evidence of this, in fact several times during the meeting, I found myself impressed with how the Ministers were keeping their calm in the face of continual protester chanting via loudspeakers outside the building.
Although the Ministers gave lots of facts and explained the government’s actions, I did not find myself convinced by quite a bit of what they said.
Housing Minister Nick Smith refuted that Auckland is in a housing crisis. He believes it’s a case of “supply and demand”, and points out that because supply has met demand in Christchurch a modern new well-built three-bedroom home is only 400,000 to 450,000 dollars. This claim was met with laughter and ridicule from many of the protesters sitting in the meeting. And I have to agree you can’t cite statistics that are arguably distorted by public reaction to a natural disaster.
The Housing Minister presented the case for government legislation forcing Auckland Council to adopt the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan as a means to free up land and thereby accelerate the supply of new homes. The government seems focused only on doing away with the Rural Urban Boundary as a way to increase the number of houses. I pointed out to the Minister that the proposed Unitary Plan was a very extensive document containing a myriad of controls over the extensive Auckland Super City area and there had been an unprecedented number of submissions from Auckland residents and ratepayers who saw flaws and failures in the Plan. Did he not agree that bulldozing this plan through to its implementation stage brought with it the risk of multiple unexpected negative effects? He responded that I had presented a good question, but it was his belief whatever we got would be better than what we have. But everybody I know who has tried to assess what the Unitary Plan means for their property is deeply concerned, mainly because they can’t make sense of it.
The Unitary Plan is not a plan that contains one singular purpose like the Rural Urban Boundary. Writers of the Proposed Unitary Plan have used it to retrospectively renegotiate previous council policy stretching back many years. Examples of this in West Auckland are the Swanson Plan, the Oratia plan and Plan Changes 35 and 36.
I am not convinced the finalised Unitary Plan will bring the best outcomes for Auckland. I see it being challenged plenty in the future. To lose sight of the many things it is trying to achieve and just focus on a singular outcome will be a disaster. We need to make sure the Unitary Plan gives property owners certainty about what we can do with our properties.