Parties' legislation aims to boost housing supply
The Labour Party recently announced a joint-housing policy with the National Party to boost housing supply. However, ACT New Zealand (ACT) claims the reforms did not go far enough.
Last week, Labour announced that it had worked with National to provide new building intensification rules to build up to three homes of up to three storeys on most sites without the need for resource consent.
ACT has welcomed the new housing supply legislation, but claimed that both parties are “in danger of failing to deliver on their promise while creating division and resentment in the community.”
“Labour and National have promised the public that they will deliver homes and that they’ll work together to achieve it. Unfortunately, their solution ignores the real problem of infrastructure funding, and the price of working secretly together is that they couldn’t work with anyone else,” said ACT Leader David Seymour.
Read more: Government announces reforms to boost housing supply
Seymour has written to Labour and National outlining three policies that could significantly improve their joint-housing policy, outlining that:
- GST sharing ensures local councils receive a payment equivalent to 50% of the GST for every new dwelling constructed in its territory. It also provides an incentive for councils to enable building and a means of covering some of the costs that fall on them as a result, transforming development from being a source of cost to a source of revenue;
- Public-private partnerships fund new projects faster and at less cost to Kiwis. They also enable the government to limit the cost and risk taken on by taxpayers and councils; and
- Abandon the MDRS and use the existing Auckland MHS Zone to achieve intensification. Instead of imposing an entirely new zone, the legislation should require that zones with lower intensity than those that currently exist are upzoned to Mixed Housing Suburban (MHS) and, in cities where such a zone does not exist, use the MHS zone, he suggested. The exemption from Resource Consents could remain, simply using the Auckland MHS rules, and removing the restriction on further quality standards in building consents.
“ACT wants to support good policy to solve the housing crisis. We can’t support the legislation as it currently stands. We urge both National and Labour to demonstrate that they are serious about cross-party solutions by engaging with the concerns we have raised,” Seymour said.
