housing intensification

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau joins Nick Mills live on Newstalk ZB Wellington Mornings.

Together they discuss the Loafers Lodge fire, public consultation ending for the Golden Mile project, hundreds of jobs likely to be cut at Victoria University of Wellington, and her missing the Wellington Region Mayoral Forum in Carterton.

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In a rare show of bipartisan cooperation, the Labour and National parties teamed-up to enact new housing intensification laws in late 2021.

This came through the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act. Pushed through a rushed select committee process to the protestations of the ACT and Green parties, it will allow the building of up to three homes of up to three storeys on most sites in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch without the need for a resource consent.

Councils in the five cities are now moving to adopt medium density residential standards (MDRS). 

But what does all this really mean, where's the process at, and is this actually the right way to tackle New Zealand's housing crisis?

To discuss all this we spoke with Doug Fairgray, director at consulting and economic research firm Market Economics, in a new episode of the Of Interest podcast.

"One of the effects [of the changes] will be that the distribution of new housing supply is likely to become spread more widely across cities rather than focused around centres and transit stations as is intended under the National Policy Statement [on Urban Development]," Fairgray says.

"There has been a strong narrative, [over] the last decade at least, that planning is to blame for high housing prices. And that has led to a focus that therefore planning legislation should solve the problem. There's quite a debate about that because house prices have been driven above all by consumer sentiment and interest rates," adds Fairgray, who is also secretary of the Association for Resource Management Practitioners.

You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.

They're going to have to work with us, because this won't go away.

This from Christchurch City Councillor Sam MacDonald after the Government appointed a mediator to work with the council on its housing intensification plan.

It comes after the council defied the Government's requirements to put in place new density rules.

MacDonald says they've got several issues with the proposal. He explained they just want the ability to have local input and say in this plan, and hopefully that's what this mediator can actually do.

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Today on The Huddle- Phil O'Reilly from Iron Duke Partners and former CEO for BusinessNZ and Ali Jones from Red PR joined us to talk about the following:

Another death at an E.D - this time a 4 year old boy, the way Grant Robertson says that it's sad and nothing more during today's post cabinet wasn't great. How do you feel when you keep hearing these stories?

Tesla owners are raking in the rebates! Does this annoy you?

Christchurch city council has heard absolutely nothing from the Government after voting down the housing intensification bill - what's the Government's plan here?

After the first round of cruise ships returned to the country with confirmed COVID-19 cases, do you plan on getting on a cruise anytime soon?

St. Bede's has had to put a stop to a themed dress up day which the kids were colloquially calling wife beater Wednesday - the school say they weren't told of the theme's name.

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Today on Canterbury Mornings, John MacDonald spoke to Christchurch Mayor, Lianne Dalziel. The discussed the housing intensity bill, and congestion charges which were included in the draft transport plan recently released.

The council has also funded a patrol to control antisocial behaviour from homeless people in the city, and does the mayor support lowering the voting age?

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