Market independence versus public control is the main point of difference between the left and right when it comes to the fiery issue of housing affordability in New Zealand
Parties mostly agree on the need for verified sustainable standards for new public buildings – but solving the residential construction conundrum is far more vexed.
The intersection of housing market woes and the climate crisis dominated the debate at last night’s election panel held by the Green Building Council.
Labour MP and current Minister for Housing Megan Woods matched wits with National’s Paul Goldsmith and Act’s Cameron Luxton onstage alongside NZ First’s Tanya Unkovich, TOP’s Damian Sycamore and Chlöe Swarbrick from the Greens.
READ MORE:Save Article * National lays out plans to cut construction red tape * The cracks in healthy home rules
Like many of the hot button issues this election, representatives from all parties agreed with the broad strokes of the the issues at play – housing affordability, resilience from severe weather events and the difficulties of decarbonising the construction sector.
Where they differed was the best way forward when it comes to the home truths of housing.
The differences lie in whether to open up or stay strong on the building materials register, whether strict housing regulations for builders help everyday Kiwis, and how strongly climate action should be pushed.
On the one end of the argument was Act’s Bay of Plenty candidate Cameron Luxton spoke about his years on the frontlines of the construction sector, and had plenty of criticism to level at Woods over the government’s policies designed to ease housing shortages.
Luxton’s solutions mostly rested on allowing the private market to do its thing, saying the current administration of the Climate Emergency Response Fund and the emissions trading scheme meant the government was “picking winners”.
“I know hands-on what it means to be in a house that’s warm, dry, sustainable and affordable,” he said. “This stuff is real and I believe it’s up to individuals to address, with a structure that allows them to do it.”
Act’s housing policy revolves around letting builders opt out of council building consents and use building insurance instead. It would share 50 percent of GST revenue from new residential buildings with councils, giving local government a financial incentive to increase the housing stock.
On the other end of the discourse was Greens MP for Auckland Central Chlöe Swarbrick, whose party has pledged greater rights protections for renters through a rental warrant of fitness programme and controls to limit how much landlords can increase rent per year.
She also cautioned against fear of intensification, saying cities like Auckland can’t afford to spread out anymore and simultaneously increase their reliance on cars and develop potential food-producing land.
“There’s been a complete lack of political courage to stand up to or work through the challenges that some may have with density going next door in some of our most desirable suburbs,” she said.
She said a lack of appetite for intensification leads to more car dependency, more time in traffic, higher emissions and the potential use of fertile farmland necessary for future food resilience.
“All of these things that other cities and countries around the world have done… for some reason in Aotearoa New Zealand we go ‘uh-uh, we’re different, we can’t do that, we can’t do density well, we can’t do 15-minute cities’… and we pay the cost for it every single day because we half-ass this stuff.”
It was a point that garnered applause from a crowd made up of a number of people working in the green construction sector or adjacent.
But National’s Paul Goldsmith responded by saying cities have grown in many different ways and some people under-estimate the difficulty of transitioning a city that’s grown up around the car to a more intensive and public transport-focused layout.
He wondered what it would take for a government to make the change while maintaining housing affordability.
“Political willpower,” Swarbrick responded.
“There is a trade off and so how best to manage that is what you’d expect any sensible government to be doing,” Goldsmith said.
National was in fact a co-author of intensification legislation along with Labour in 2020, although it has taken a marked u-turn in recent months.
Goldsmith said it was the extreme weather of 2023 and its pressure on infrastructure that convinced the party to take a step back and have a rethink.
Now National’s housing policy rests on giving councils the ability to opt out of that legislation, as well as cutting regulations and a $1 billion fund incentivising local councils to embark on their own mini-KiwiBuilds.
Woods was pensive about the days of that bipartisan agreement, which began with Judith Collins writing to Jacinda Ardern.
“It was as much the National Party holding the pen – a rare grown-up moment in New Zealand politics,” she said. “Maybe because so many women were involved… I think it’s a real shame that National has backed away from that.”
For her part, Woods pulled out Labour’s record on healthy homes standards and public housing delivery – 13,000 houses in the last two terms, or around one in seven of current public housing stock.
At the same time she was careful to avoid dwelling on the unmet targets of the KiwiBuild programme, instead saying “green shoots of change” starting to appear.
She said the high quality of Kāinga Ora homes – built to Homestar 6 requirements – would give the market the ability to learn how to deliver high-quality housing at scale.
Woods was up in Auckland just last week to open up a new Kāinga Ora build in Northcote, where 85 modern apartments with views out to Rangitoto will soon house some of the country’s most vulnerable.
Like Te Mātāwai in Auckland’s city centre just last month, the development shows a new direction in the design of public housing. Seemingly taking a leaf from Auckland City Mission’s HomeGround, the new developments are apartment-style, intensified living, with wraparound services included like on-site tenancy officers.
At the opening of the new build – named Ngahuripoke – Woods was keen to point out the high proportion of apartments in the development built with full accessibility in mind.
There are some easy wins for Labour when they point towards the exponential ramping up of public housing stock in the last few years.
But political opponents can still easily reach for difficult rent increases making life tough for huge swathes of the population right now.
TOP’s Damian Sycamore is a single-issue man. He’s running for Auckland Central to get some party votes for the minor party, but also to get the chance to talk about housing.
“Climate change is obviously the worlds biggest story, but housing unaffordability is New Zealand’s,” he has previously told Newsroom. “You cant talk to people about lifestyle changes or carbon emissions reductions until they’ve got that.”
Sycamore, who is also the general manager of the Waiheke Community Housing Trust, said land is too expensive and under-supplied, and its the root cause of a plethora of the country’s issues.
“We all know the social damage that’s caused by an obscenely housing market,” he said, listing off stress, pressure on health services, crime and general social anomie.
TOP wants to increase housing supply by giving landlords tax deductible interest, instituting a land value tax, large deposits required for investment properties and funding community housing trusts.
New Zealand First’s Tanya Unkovich echoed sentiments around the importance of healthy homes, but didn’t have much to reveal about the party’s exact policies.
In the policy stocktake undertaken by the Green Building Council before the panel, New Zealand First said it could not provide specific details on policies at this stage.
The party has published a wide-ranging list of 36 commitments that goes into some minute detail in some areas – it wants a referendum on four-year terms in parliament, a bid for the 2026 Commonwealth Games to be held in Christchurch, salmon farms off Stewart Island, and stricter rules around who can use which bathroom.
But when it comes to housing, Unkovich was forced to be pretty vague.
She said the party would support policies for healthy homes standards if they are common sense, bemoaned the steep cost of household commodities, and stressed the need for accessibility in housing with New Zealand’s aged population.
The party policies as reported to the Green Building Council are as follows:
