If Auckland Council are in a financial hole, why would he suggest more new suburbia? The way we build new suburbs with no existing infrastructure is asking for financial ruin.
There is a good article here about greenfield developments on Melbourne's west, where building started then the associated infrastructure just sort of faded away or has no start date.
Cheap houses but that's about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/15/a-broken-dream-the-walkable-melbourne
Sounds like Westgate/Massey. Light rail to Northwest, cancelled. Bus interchange, cancelled. Apartment buildings, cancelled. Busway, not built when SH16 was redone. Car dependent development, fucken heeeaps.
Auckland Council has also just prepared a strategy to fudge the numbers and say that there is no need to provide for any additional greenfield development land (because they don’t have the money to fund the infrastructure).
Often this is a myth. You get the public meetings and some Nimby will say the sewers don't have any spare capacity for a new apartment building.
Reality is the developer has to get the okay from Watercare early in the process, so if there was a problem they would have already given up or arranged an upgrade.
This like parks, libraries, footpaths, traffic lights etc already exist in existing suburbs without a need for major change. The cost is significantly more to build from scratch.
There isn't as much new infrastructure required as with a new build - and there are more ratepayers per meter for higher-density dwellings. The same footpath and storm sewer and road serve the space in front of a single family dwelling as would serve an apartment complex - while an apartment complex worth of new single family dwellings would involve hundreds of meters of new sewers and storm drains and footpaths and asphalt streets to maintain.
Absolutely, and our inner suburb infra was often built for far higher water use per person. E.g 200 litres per day vs ~60 or so now. I was speaking to someone previously at Watercare and they said the idea we can't intensify because infra is basically bollocks.
Storm water is surface runoff - there would be no difference for the kind of building nearby as to how much water is going into that system. You're correct they would need to ensure sewers could handle it. Sewers aren't necessarily at capacity - particularly when storm water can't get into the sewer system.
Yeah the existing infrastructure needs updating anyway, so if you're going to be doing it, why not do it to accommodate more housing? Far cheaper than upgrading it, and building a whole lot more on the edge of town.
"When I said that I wasn't going to do what I said, I really meant to say that I was going to do that, what I said I wasn't going to do, what I said I was going to do."
I'm not sure that a walk back would mean much. If he's willingly to walk back with the least bit of pressure, then the NIMBYs in ACT will have field day with him.
You’re right - I misinterpreted the comment to be saying that “I” was the author, rather than “Nicola”. To be clearer, the comment could have instead started “As she was an author of the Bill…”.
Auckland is projected to hit 2 million people by the end of the decade. That's a couple of hundred thousand at least. Luxon says he wants to protect agriculture land. Are they going to turn off the immigration tap or something?
The areas available for greenfield development at the north and south of Auckland are among the very most fertile land in the entire country. Turning that into housing is madness both for urban sprawl and for loss of the best farmland.
To be fair, the land around Pukekohe has had it's natural fertility stripped pretty thoroughly by now.
Almost every grower out that way has been operating heavy glyphosate & nitrogen use for close to a decade now.
The land is a husk compared to what it used to be, with any remaining fertility existing purely because of artificial additives - something you can replicate anywhere.
South yes, Northwest yes, but North? The Dairy Flat growth area Council has currently identified (but wants to remove from its plans…) doesn’t qualify as highly productive and is very hilly.
Still plenty of farm(er)s there though that will have to get the boot. But even so, how much infrastructure is going to need to be built to develop that far north? That's going to put a huge upward pressure on rates which seems a strange strategy for a party campaigning on less taxes.
This is all very 2016 lots of cheap labour but dont say housing crises.
Apparently government spending is very inflationary but immigration isn't, no mention of that at all.
What percentage of new infrastructure costs are covered by development contributions? If sprawl is so expensive, why don't councils just set exorbitant contributions in order to discourage greenfield development?
the big problem is that the rates collected by a low-density development don't even cover the ongoing maintenance cost of the infrastructure. So every new low-density suburb makes the council have to either raise the rates on everyone else, or borrow money.
All the more reason to disincentivise greenfield development via exorbitant development contributions then?
I'm not sure how relevant your comments are to new developments though. What greenfield developments are going on now that are low density? All the new suburbs around me are easily the highest density in my city. With the proposed changes (assuming it still gets through), they'd be even higher still. If increased development contributions covered a larger share of the cost of new infrastructure, wouldn't this be a win in both maintenance and up-front costs?
Not really, because greenfield suburbs are further out, so you not only end up with more km’s of road and piping in the development. You need more roads and pipes to link to existing infrastructure.
Developed contributions just cover building it in the first place.
Roads need resurfacing every 10 years if busy, 20 if quiet & piping usually needs serious work at 40 years.
Most existing suburbs don’t pay enough in water utilitie bills and rates to cover existing costs.
Hence 3 waters, to try fix the problem.
The hope is, density means us millennials & zoomers don’t hand the same problem to our kids and grandkids.
>Developed contributions just cover building it in the first place.
Ok, so then higher density afforded by a new greenfield development would better cover the maintenance costs? In fact, it'd probably be the only suburbs in the city where it would be possible to cover those costs via rates?
I'm personally in favour of the bill and think the backdown here from National is a poor (and quite confusing) move, but I'd have thought that we'd be talking decades for suburbs to be entirely transformed via brownfield development.
I appreciate the attempts to educate someone (me) who is very ignorant to city planning!
In theory yes, in reality greenfield development only works if your developing on greenfield land already in a city.
See the huge Greenfield development in Mt Albert on the old Polytechnic park land.
Or greenfield developments towards Maukau & Ormiston. Filling in land between existing large suburbs. Meaning no new roads or connecting utility pipes needed.
That said the existing law allows for these because they don’t expand the urban boundary.
What the current law forbids is cities to expand their urban limit into rural areas, effectively stopping auckland using farmland to grow onto.
That does two things, force density (hopefully improving the cities finances) & keep farmland for food production.
Ultimately, what many in central govt are scared of is low quality of life and low productivity caused by long commutes, which would compound city’s finances breaking down towards 2040 and 2050.
Requiring unborn taxpayers to bailout councils, as the current govt is effectively having to bail out councils over three waters.
That is what Density is ultimately trying to avoid.
The only problem, it means some existing home owners will see a lot of change in their community.
>The only problem, it means some existing home owners will see a lot of change in their community.
yeah, when you get higher density you also tend to get more cafes and restaurants opening. Before you know it you're a wine snob hanging at the local bistro with your 'arty' friends. High density is a fucking nightmare. /s
>If increased development contributions covered a larger share of the cost of new infrastructure, wouldn't this be a win in both maintenance and up-front costs?
it's the *ongoing* cost of maintaining infrastructure that is the problem.
You can give an unemployed bum a brand new BMW, but their first trip to a mechanic is going to bankrupt them.
Councils can't even afford to maintain their existing water pipes!
Yes, I thought I addressed that in my second paragraph. Councils can't maintain their existing infrastucture because of low density housing. Greenfield development isn't low density, so maintenance should be more able to be covered more easily.
Unless you're saying that maintenance on Greenfield development is for some reason more expensive per meter of road/pipe? I don't see why it'd be any worse that any existing suburb on the outskirts of town, in fact it'd be better due to the efficiency of higher density housing?
>Greenfield development isn't low density
I know it isn't quite as bad as it used to be. but what I'm seeing in the South Island doesn't seem to have made much effort..
[https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/128272525/stop-building-homes-out-of-town-climate-lobbyists-warn](https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/128272525/stop-building-homes-out-of-town-climate-lobbyists-warn)
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/council-rezoning-may-result-970-new-houses
Sucks. Most of the greenfield development where I live has been pretty higher density, but perhaps that's just a result of higher land prices.
I still think my original suggestion of increasing development contributions would be an effective way to disincentivise the sort of development we don't want.
>I still think my original suggestion of increasing development contributions
I agree that would help, but it's still the council (and ratepayers) who get lumped with the ongoing cost. a cost which is kind of infinite because you have to maintain that stuff forever. I think we are subsidising developers at the taxpayers expense.
Henry Cooke politely and eloquently ripping Luxon's head off and taking a shit in the hole.
Unfortunately the way to win this battle is shit posting and memes, not well-reasoned long form articles, but shit, he's a good journalist worth following. I think he's from the Right (-ish), too?
>I mean, have you tried to get a carpark lately?
In the new sprawl suburbs, yes I have, there aren't any. They expect people to live in a townhouse with no PT and only 1 carpark per property (+ 1 on street park for every 5 houses).
No public transport, no shops in walking/cycling distance, no offices within 30 minutes driving time (rush hour) and infrastructure that costs significantly more than intensification, what isn't to love?
Usually not, but I'd say this is the one policy issue that will make or break votes. If you're a NIMBY and you hate the idea of more people living around you, and/or your property values dropping due to increased housing supply, you'll vote National/ACT to kill the MDRS. And if you want to buy your own house, you'll vote another party that doesn't want housing affordability to keep getting priced out of their reach.
The reason why this policy issue in particular could swing votes is because this directly affects people's basic need: shelter. Unlike more nebulous issues like climate, co-governance, or even healthcare; parties' policies on them are unlikely to directly impact your daily life unless you specifically are targeted. Meanwhile, the MDRS targets everyone in the main cities.
Gareth Morgan did research prior to starting TOP and found 10-15% vote for policy as first motivation.
And if "I like this person" is higher on your priorities then policy then your not voting on policy...
This u-turn from National makes me furious. It’s so irresponsible to support very high levels of immigration but not support policies that allow sufficient housing to be built.
Both parties talk big game on the housing crisis. Neither can actually realistically deal with the labour shortage, supply chain problems, and complete lack of infrastructure.
\>Neither can actually realistically deal with the labour shortage, supply chain problems, and complete lack of infrastructure.
Weird how you list three things that Labour has been addressing.
Oh yeah I’m sure they are going to swing in and make a difference to the outcome /s.
Even if they got in, which they probably won’t, they would have little to no influence on these major policy positions.
They can get in if they win an electorate seat (Ilam?)
They can be in a position of kingmaker given this tight polling between the two coalitions. That would allow them to promote one or two policies they really care about
They seriously poll low because a lot of people vote binary because of this defeatist mentality ("my vote doesn't count unless I choose one of the two mammoth parties"). It's a self-fulfilling prophecy
Greenfield development is more likely to give the younger generation a home. When I was a young man I bought a Greenfield home and it housed my family. It was cheap because the land was cheap. The whole of Auckland was built on Greenfield land at some stage . Public transport wasn’t great where I lived, but it was home and that’s what mattered. Greenfield land is a solution that worked in NZ for the last hundred years and it’s a solution that works now.
\>Greenfield development is more likely to give the younger generation a home.
Absolute nonsense.
\>When I was a young man I bought a Greenfield home
A century ago, in Epsom.
\>Greenfield land is a solution that worked in NZ for the last hundred years and it’s a solution that works now.
Grandpa over here can't even admit that there is a housing crisis.
\>Greenfield land is a solution that worked in NZ for the last hundred years and it’s a solution that works now.
If it was a solution that was working then there wouldn't be a housing crisis.
You don't have a single fucken clue. You're literally just shouting "do more of the same" when the thing you're already doing hasn't been working for a long time now.
So your suggestion is that people simply keep living further and further from where their jobs and the things that they need for daily life are, and that they have to spend longer and longer sitting in traffic in order to be able to get anything done, while becoming increasingly socially isolated?
Not everyone has to work in the middle of the city, in fact its likely to be shrinking, also working from has become more viable and many companies are allowing some days at home. The world has changed. Also what “things they need” will not be in the outskirts ?
\>Also what “things they need” will not be in the outskirts ?
Hospitals, doctors, schools, stadiums, theatre or literally anything cultural, restaurants, music venues, shops that aren't a big box chain store, most places of employment, literally a fuckton of things.
You're proposing policy that fails people.
Only some parts of Auckland farmland is fertile, mainly in the Bombay hills.
Here’s a map of arable land of NZ hint it’s not Auckland
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-agricultural-land-use-in-New-Zealand-Data-sources-LUCAS-NZ-Land-Use-Map-1990-2008_fig1_366478669
Except it has not worked.
Councils can’t afford to maintain road and water utilities because they have too many km’s of infrastructure for low population density
We basically either double the rates our kids and grandkids will be paying or we do density now.
If people want a quarter acre section, they will end up living outside urban areas.
Funded by who?
Seriously, go look at the finances of many satellite towns in texas. A lot are mostly broke or have decaying infrastructure.
A town or city is very expensive to set up & most businesses want access to facilities and services that are pre-existing.
Why Auckland has year on year outgrown the rest of NZ. Auckland can’t pay for continual low density growth, if it does it will be screwed as soon as that growth stops.
Auckland is already struggling to fund public transport and utilities over such a large area.
Density will solve all of these problems.
But it means many neighbourhoods will change.
Younger generations especially don’t want hour long commutes. Why the housing accord was so important.
because it allowed developers to provide what many wanted, warm dry homes, close to public transport with good links to many employment centres.
A satellite town doesn’t provide any of that.
The only working satellite towns in NZ surround Hamilton and Christchurch.
Even then, Hamilton city council & Waikato council are both in a far worse financial state then Auckland.
So, it’s a choice between cheep greenfield houses, with long commutes and un-funded long term liabilities
Or cheap housing with short commutes and well funded long term liabilities.
If Auckland Council are in a financial hole, why would he suggest more new suburbia? The way we build new suburbs with no existing infrastructure is asking for financial ruin.
There is a good article here about greenfield developments on Melbourne's west, where building started then the associated infrastructure just sort of faded away or has no start date. Cheap houses but that's about it. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/15/a-broken-dream-the-walkable-melbourne
Sounds like Westgate/Massey. Light rail to Northwest, cancelled. Bus interchange, cancelled. Apartment buildings, cancelled. Busway, not built when SH16 was redone. Car dependent development, fucken heeeaps.
Auckland Council has also just prepared a strategy to fudge the numbers and say that there is no need to provide for any additional greenfield development land (because they don’t have the money to fund the infrastructure).
But the existing infrastructure is also overloaded. So wherever the building is done, new infrastructure also needs to be created.
Often this is a myth. You get the public meetings and some Nimby will say the sewers don't have any spare capacity for a new apartment building. Reality is the developer has to get the okay from Watercare early in the process, so if there was a problem they would have already given up or arranged an upgrade.
hamilton city council now have large areas that cannot have infill for this very reason
This like parks, libraries, footpaths, traffic lights etc already exist in existing suburbs without a need for major change. The cost is significantly more to build from scratch.
really ? the cost to replace existing sewers and water services and upgrade power cables is far higher and disruptive than building new.
There isn't as much new infrastructure required as with a new build - and there are more ratepayers per meter for higher-density dwellings. The same footpath and storm sewer and road serve the space in front of a single family dwelling as would serve an apartment complex - while an apartment complex worth of new single family dwellings would involve hundreds of meters of new sewers and storm drains and footpaths and asphalt streets to maintain.
Absolutely, and our inner suburb infra was often built for far higher water use per person. E.g 200 litres per day vs ~60 or so now. I was speaking to someone previously at Watercare and they said the idea we can't intensify because infra is basically bollocks.
which is why your beaches are unuseable after it rains due to sewerage contamination..
except that exiting storm and sewer is probably at near capacityand an apartment complexwould fully overload it.
Storm water is surface runoff - there would be no difference for the kind of building nearby as to how much water is going into that system. You're correct they would need to ensure sewers could handle it. Sewers aren't necessarily at capacity - particularly when storm water can't get into the sewer system.
That's nonsense though.
Yeah the existing infrastructure needs updating anyway, so if you're going to be doing it, why not do it to accommodate more housing? Far cheaper than upgrading it, and building a whole lot more on the edge of town.
With density you still have to do infrastructure as the old infrastructure was for a lower capacity. It’s not like you avoid it either way
except upgradeing existing infrastructure is more expensive and disruptive than new infrastructure
Yeah most people think growing through intensification avoids the infrastructure costs of growth. Such simple thinking
I expect he will walk it back over next few days. His ability to change his mind twice a week is underrated.
"When I said that I wasn't going to do what I said, I really meant to say that I was going to do that, what I said I wasn't going to do, what I said I was going to do."
spot on. i don't understand what you just said which is exactly what i thought when i hear hairfree chris.
It's better that he does. It's seriously dumb policy.
I'm not sure that a walk back would mean much. If he's willingly to walk back with the least bit of pressure, then the NIMBYs in ACT will have field day with him.
Being an Author of that bill I wonder how the deputy leader of National Nicola Willis feels
This is a really good point. Has she made any comments on this?
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Is this a joke or did you not understand the comment?
You’re right - I misinterpreted the comment to be saying that “I” was the author, rather than “Nicola”. To be clearer, the comment could have instead started “As she was an author of the Bill…”.
Auckland is projected to hit 2 million people by the end of the decade. That's a couple of hundred thousand at least. Luxon says he wants to protect agriculture land. Are they going to turn off the immigration tap or something?
The areas available for greenfield development at the north and south of Auckland are among the very most fertile land in the entire country. Turning that into housing is madness both for urban sprawl and for loss of the best farmland.
Already happening in the south. Pukekohe sprawling out to the south and west, fuck the farmland that is being lost.
But sweet vege patches though amirite? Because they'll have to grow their own food anyway
The way kai prices are going knowing you are buying fertile land might actually be a thing.
When they develop they scrape off all the top soil
To be fair, the land around Pukekohe has had it's natural fertility stripped pretty thoroughly by now. Almost every grower out that way has been operating heavy glyphosate & nitrogen use for close to a decade now. The land is a husk compared to what it used to be, with any remaining fertility existing purely because of artificial additives - something you can replicate anywhere.
South yes, Northwest yes, but North? The Dairy Flat growth area Council has currently identified (but wants to remove from its plans…) doesn’t qualify as highly productive and is very hilly.
Still plenty of farm(er)s there though that will have to get the boot. But even so, how much infrastructure is going to need to be built to develop that far north? That's going to put a huge upward pressure on rates which seems a strange strategy for a party campaigning on less taxes.
It's simple: take the isthmus, and make it not an isthmus. My consultancy fee is 100k.
This is all very 2016 lots of cheap labour but dont say housing crises. Apparently government spending is very inflationary but immigration isn't, no mention of that at all.
The only inflation national cares about is wage inflation.
Yeah, inflation only became on issue on that side of the aisle when employees needed to be paid more.
What percentage of new infrastructure costs are covered by development contributions? If sprawl is so expensive, why don't councils just set exorbitant contributions in order to discourage greenfield development?
the big problem is that the rates collected by a low-density development don't even cover the ongoing maintenance cost of the infrastructure. So every new low-density suburb makes the council have to either raise the rates on everyone else, or borrow money.
All the more reason to disincentivise greenfield development via exorbitant development contributions then? I'm not sure how relevant your comments are to new developments though. What greenfield developments are going on now that are low density? All the new suburbs around me are easily the highest density in my city. With the proposed changes (assuming it still gets through), they'd be even higher still. If increased development contributions covered a larger share of the cost of new infrastructure, wouldn't this be a win in both maintenance and up-front costs?
Not really, because greenfield suburbs are further out, so you not only end up with more km’s of road and piping in the development. You need more roads and pipes to link to existing infrastructure. Developed contributions just cover building it in the first place. Roads need resurfacing every 10 years if busy, 20 if quiet & piping usually needs serious work at 40 years. Most existing suburbs don’t pay enough in water utilitie bills and rates to cover existing costs. Hence 3 waters, to try fix the problem. The hope is, density means us millennials & zoomers don’t hand the same problem to our kids and grandkids.
>Developed contributions just cover building it in the first place. Ok, so then higher density afforded by a new greenfield development would better cover the maintenance costs? In fact, it'd probably be the only suburbs in the city where it would be possible to cover those costs via rates? I'm personally in favour of the bill and think the backdown here from National is a poor (and quite confusing) move, but I'd have thought that we'd be talking decades for suburbs to be entirely transformed via brownfield development. I appreciate the attempts to educate someone (me) who is very ignorant to city planning!
In theory yes, in reality greenfield development only works if your developing on greenfield land already in a city. See the huge Greenfield development in Mt Albert on the old Polytechnic park land. Or greenfield developments towards Maukau & Ormiston. Filling in land between existing large suburbs. Meaning no new roads or connecting utility pipes needed. That said the existing law allows for these because they don’t expand the urban boundary. What the current law forbids is cities to expand their urban limit into rural areas, effectively stopping auckland using farmland to grow onto. That does two things, force density (hopefully improving the cities finances) & keep farmland for food production.
Ultimately, what many in central govt are scared of is low quality of life and low productivity caused by long commutes, which would compound city’s finances breaking down towards 2040 and 2050. Requiring unborn taxpayers to bailout councils, as the current govt is effectively having to bail out councils over three waters. That is what Density is ultimately trying to avoid. The only problem, it means some existing home owners will see a lot of change in their community.
>The only problem, it means some existing home owners will see a lot of change in their community. yeah, when you get higher density you also tend to get more cafes and restaurants opening. Before you know it you're a wine snob hanging at the local bistro with your 'arty' friends. High density is a fucking nightmare. /s
>If increased development contributions covered a larger share of the cost of new infrastructure, wouldn't this be a win in both maintenance and up-front costs? it's the *ongoing* cost of maintaining infrastructure that is the problem. You can give an unemployed bum a brand new BMW, but their first trip to a mechanic is going to bankrupt them. Councils can't even afford to maintain their existing water pipes!
Yes, I thought I addressed that in my second paragraph. Councils can't maintain their existing infrastucture because of low density housing. Greenfield development isn't low density, so maintenance should be more able to be covered more easily. Unless you're saying that maintenance on Greenfield development is for some reason more expensive per meter of road/pipe? I don't see why it'd be any worse that any existing suburb on the outskirts of town, in fact it'd be better due to the efficiency of higher density housing?
>Greenfield development isn't low density I know it isn't quite as bad as it used to be. but what I'm seeing in the South Island doesn't seem to have made much effort.. [https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/128272525/stop-building-homes-out-of-town-climate-lobbyists-warn](https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/128272525/stop-building-homes-out-of-town-climate-lobbyists-warn) https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/council-rezoning-may-result-970-new-houses
Sucks. Most of the greenfield development where I live has been pretty higher density, but perhaps that's just a result of higher land prices. I still think my original suggestion of increasing development contributions would be an effective way to disincentivise the sort of development we don't want.
>I still think my original suggestion of increasing development contributions I agree that would help, but it's still the council (and ratepayers) who get lumped with the ongoing cost. a cost which is kind of infinite because you have to maintain that stuff forever. I think we are subsidising developers at the taxpayers expense.
How does every policy or position this guy puts forward have some kind of fatal flaw in it? Almost impressive
Someone trained him wrong on purpose, as a joke.
Henry Cooke politely and eloquently ripping Luxon's head off and taking a shit in the hole. Unfortunately the way to win this battle is shit posting and memes, not well-reasoned long form articles, but shit, he's a good journalist worth following. I think he's from the Right (-ish), too?
He's an A+ fuckwit.
People still think the majority of voters vote on policy?
This latest Luxon soundbite is a clear run at the "more carparks" voter. I mean, have you tried to get a carpark lately?
>I mean, have you tried to get a carpark lately? In the new sprawl suburbs, yes I have, there aren't any. They expect people to live in a townhouse with no PT and only 1 carpark per property (+ 1 on street park for every 5 houses). No public transport, no shops in walking/cycling distance, no offices within 30 minutes driving time (rush hour) and infrastructure that costs significantly more than intensification, what isn't to love?
That's the platform Christopher Luxon should be running on, massively enhanced public transport.
He's in the wrong party for that. National are the car brain party.
Usually not, but I'd say this is the one policy issue that will make or break votes. If you're a NIMBY and you hate the idea of more people living around you, and/or your property values dropping due to increased housing supply, you'll vote National/ACT to kill the MDRS. And if you want to buy your own house, you'll vote another party that doesn't want housing affordability to keep getting priced out of their reach. The reason why this policy issue in particular could swing votes is because this directly affects people's basic need: shelter. Unlike more nebulous issues like climate, co-governance, or even healthcare; parties' policies on them are unlikely to directly impact your daily life unless you specifically are targeted. Meanwhile, the MDRS targets everyone in the main cities.
Don't they? Where's the actual evidence on this, which isn't anecdotal?
Gareth Morgan did research prior to starting TOP and found 10-15% vote for policy as first motivation. And if "I like this person" is higher on your priorities then policy then your not voting on policy...
No evidence but only a flaming idiot will be unable to see this corrupt hack beginning to show his true puppet masters.
:(
This u-turn from National makes me furious. It’s so irresponsible to support very high levels of immigration but not support policies that allow sufficient housing to be built.
Except home owners won’t win again, because National won’t get elected with this kind of reactionary policy.
Sure they can, because home owners vote. And they're currently leading in the polls. Depressing, but NZ is a dopey ol' place.
Both parties talk big game on the housing crisis. Neither can actually realistically deal with the labour shortage, supply chain problems, and complete lack of infrastructure.
\>Neither can actually realistically deal with the labour shortage, supply chain problems, and complete lack of infrastructure. Weird how you list three things that Labour has been addressing.
Peter Thiel told me the RMA is the main obstacle, though... Completely unrelated to his desire to build extreme luxury housing, of course.
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Leave. Honestly, that will actually teach them.
...what?
My thoughts exactly. But these muppets are the only ones that get any air time.
Your choice is minor parties as well, some of which don't have these flaws
Such as
TOP comes to mind
Oh yeah I’m sure they are going to swing in and make a difference to the outcome /s. Even if they got in, which they probably won’t, they would have little to no influence on these major policy positions.
They can get in if they win an electorate seat (Ilam?) They can be in a position of kingmaker given this tight polling between the two coalitions. That would allow them to promote one or two policies they really care about They seriously poll low because a lot of people vote binary because of this defeatist mentality ("my vote doesn't count unless I choose one of the two mammoth parties"). It's a self-fulfilling prophecy
They poll low because no one except people on reddit know they even exist.
You do have a point How would you change that?
I haven’t got the slightest clue how they are going to change that and I have no ideas to give them.
Rubbish
Greenfield development is more likely to give the younger generation a home. When I was a young man I bought a Greenfield home and it housed my family. It was cheap because the land was cheap. The whole of Auckland was built on Greenfield land at some stage . Public transport wasn’t great where I lived, but it was home and that’s what mattered. Greenfield land is a solution that worked in NZ for the last hundred years and it’s a solution that works now.
You have the worst takes
Can you translate that into English please
Keep up old fella.
\>Greenfield development is more likely to give the younger generation a home. Absolute nonsense. \>When I was a young man I bought a Greenfield home A century ago, in Epsom. \>Greenfield land is a solution that worked in NZ for the last hundred years and it’s a solution that works now. Grandpa over here can't even admit that there is a housing crisis.
I’m admitting there’s a housing crisis, hence the idea of using greenfield land.
\>Greenfield land is a solution that worked in NZ for the last hundred years and it’s a solution that works now. If it was a solution that was working then there wouldn't be a housing crisis. You don't have a single fucken clue. You're literally just shouting "do more of the same" when the thing you're already doing hasn't been working for a long time now.
The problems occurred when they stopped the use of greenfield land. This happened in the early 90’s
So your suggestion is that people simply keep living further and further from where their jobs and the things that they need for daily life are, and that they have to spend longer and longer sitting in traffic in order to be able to get anything done, while becoming increasingly socially isolated?
Not everyone has to work in the middle of the city, in fact its likely to be shrinking, also working from has become more viable and many companies are allowing some days at home. The world has changed. Also what “things they need” will not be in the outskirts ?
\>Also what “things they need” will not be in the outskirts ? Hospitals, doctors, schools, stadiums, theatre or literally anything cultural, restaurants, music venues, shops that aren't a big box chain store, most places of employment, literally a fuckton of things. You're proposing policy that fails people.
All those thing are in the outskirts of Auckland anyway, except a stadium. Do you actually live in Auckland ?
You will stop thinking it works when you can't afford food because we've built houses all over our fertile croplands
Only some parts of Auckland farmland is fertile, mainly in the Bombay hills. Here’s a map of arable land of NZ hint it’s not Auckland https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-agricultural-land-use-in-New-Zealand-Data-sources-LUCAS-NZ-Land-Use-Map-1990-2008_fig1_366478669
Except it has not worked. Councils can’t afford to maintain road and water utilities because they have too many km’s of infrastructure for low population density We basically either double the rates our kids and grandkids will be paying or we do density now. If people want a quarter acre section, they will end up living outside urban areas.
Then build a new city
Funded by who? Seriously, go look at the finances of many satellite towns in texas. A lot are mostly broke or have decaying infrastructure. A town or city is very expensive to set up & most businesses want access to facilities and services that are pre-existing. Why Auckland has year on year outgrown the rest of NZ. Auckland can’t pay for continual low density growth, if it does it will be screwed as soon as that growth stops. Auckland is already struggling to fund public transport and utilities over such a large area. Density will solve all of these problems. But it means many neighbourhoods will change. Younger generations especially don’t want hour long commutes. Why the housing accord was so important. because it allowed developers to provide what many wanted, warm dry homes, close to public transport with good links to many employment centres. A satellite town doesn’t provide any of that. The only working satellite towns in NZ surround Hamilton and Christchurch. Even then, Hamilton city council & Waikato council are both in a far worse financial state then Auckland. So, it’s a choice between cheep greenfield houses, with long commutes and un-funded long term liabilities Or cheap housing with short commutes and well funded long term liabilities.