Housing
Housing is Wellington is by far our largest crisis. It is killing the city as people increasingly have to choose between emigration or living in slums unless they are lucky and have purchased one of the few homes for sale.
To bring Wellington into the city we know it can be we MUST address housing affordabilty and safety. Without people an economy does not exist. To fully fix this will take many years and we need to start now.
Resource consents MUST be made simpler to get approved. This does not mean that we remove regulations as is often called for. It means that developers, land owners, etc. need to be able to have confidence that a submission will be approved before submitting it. Guidance needs to be clarified where problems are often found and such information communicated clearly to all involved.
Disputes on consents should be examined to see how many are on aesthetic things such as designs or colours. Such disputes should be ignored as art and general preferences change over time.
Disputes around things such shading or height should have a set of responses for developers to apply. Just as we require Wellington Internation Airport to fund sound insulation in nearby properties we could require developers to fund the installation of lighting or awnings for neighbouring impacted properties. However neighbouring land owners cannot be allowed to stop the creation of affordable and safe housing because they have some belief their title on the land extends to neighbouring properties.
Council MUST work with other councils and place pressure on central government to approve modular housing components so that council officers do not have to approve every little design or design change. Councils need to pressure central government on designating building material standards in other countries as equivalent to NZ standards where equivalent. Currently we are held hostage by so few companies being willing to go through the approval process to get material approved for use in NZ.
Mixed use developments should be prioritized over single use construction. COVID has accelerated the move to more distributed working arrangements with many people working from home for part of the working week. Mixed use developments also encourage communities to grow.
To encourage densification council should examine using approval fees to put a large premium construction of standalone housing. We must move towards more efficient forms of housing not just for reducing the cost of construction but also for ecological reasons.
I would push for council to invest in the construction of low rise apartments on council owned land. Redevelopment of locations such as community centres could have apartments built on floors above the previous use, creating a mixed use development.
Council also needs to identify ways that housing can be intensified even if the infrastructure is not yet able to handle the peak demands that could be expected. Developments can be developed to contain systems for buffering such demands so that they do not overload that point in the system. Water, waste, and power have options.
Cities, businesses, economies, etc. exist because of people. To support all of this you MUST support their ability to actually live in the area. Without changes we will complete the recreation of the landed gentry from Europe. This is not a result that I will ever accept as it belittles and enslaves one group to another.
Authorised by James Sullivan. James@TFG.nz