Housing affordability and urban form

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, January 21st, 2019 - 35 comments
Categories: climate change, Environment, global warming, housing, labour, national, quality of life, Simon Bridges, sustainability - Tags: ,

Reprinted from gregpresland.com.

Hugh Pavletich of Demographia has released its annual review of housing affordability. The results are not surprising. New Zealand continues to perform poorly on any matrix associated with affordable housing.

From Radio New Zealand:

The annual Demographia International Housing Affordability shows New Zealand has continued to be one of the most unaffordable countries in the world to buy a house, with the median price more than six times the median annual household income.

Of the eight New Zealand markets looked at, none were considered affordable.

Palmerston North-Manawatu was the least expensive at 5.0, then Christchurch at 5.4, Dunedin at 6.1, Wellington at 6.3, Napier-Hastings at 6.7, Hamilton-Waikato at 6.8, then Auckland at 9.0, followed by Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty as the most unaffordable at 9.1.

Anything more than three times household salary is deemed unaffordable and homes more than five times a median annual household income is considered “severely unaffordable”.

Auckland was the seventh most unaffordable major city in the world, behind Hong Kong, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, San Jose and Los Angeles.

The measurement seems to me to be somewhat arbitrary and I could not believe the statement that Tauranga was less affordable than Auckland unless wages there are really out of sync.

Report co-author Hugh Pavletich then blamed the current Government for the problem despite the long term nature of the issue. And expected that somehow it should have been solved in the last 12 months.

“Unfortunately, this has been created, in large measure, by the government just dithering through 2018 in dealing with these issues.

Mr Pavletich said housing unaffordability was “solvable”.

“They just [need to] allow affordable housing to be built. In other words, getting out of the road more than anything on this land supply issue and bringing in proper debt financing for infrastructure.”

He told Morning Report the Labour Party was in trouble at the next election if it didn’t tackle the issue and that Housing Minister Phil Twyford had been “dithering” on the issue.

“Mr Twyford and the Labour-led government know exactly what needs to be done and if they don’t do it this year, and we visibly don’t see more social housing I think they are going to be toast at the 2020 election,” he said.

He said the government’s flagship policy to tackle housing needs, KiwiBuild, needed immediate revision.

“KiwiBuild has been so badly-conceived that it’s just been a joke … and regrettably the government needs to really go right back and revamp that whole thing or continue to lose credibility promoting such rubbish,” he said.

“To be talking about affordable housing at $650,000 is just an insult to everybody’s intelligence.”

His comments about price completely misrepresent the affordability of KiwiBuild houses. $650,000 is the top price payable for stand alone houses with three or more bedrooms. Terraced houses and apartments are anticipated to cost below $500,000.

And his proposed solution, opening up land supply and letting urban sprawl happen, shows his philosophical beliefs very well.

Thankfully not all economists agree. Again from Radio New Zealand:

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the reality was there had been so many different failures around land use, infrastructure building and design.

He thinks councils need to have the power and the ability to build more houses if affordability is to be fixed.

Mr Eaqub said the government was heading in the right direction with regulations around infrastructure and local government.

“But the big fixers are very slow to move, and we won’t see the benefits of that for some time to come.”

I thought I would have a look at some of Demographia’s work. The website is, how shall I put this politely, visually challenging.

Some of the linked to sources are also fascinating.

There is this cluster fuck of text about climate change in this article:

There are at least two ways to comprehensively reduce GHG emissions — not surprisingly, a right way and a wrong way.

The wrong way is typified by the conventional wisdom among many puritanical urban planners, These social engineers have been frustrated for decades, failing to herd automobile drivers into transit and new residents into pre-War densities. All the while, their demons — the expansion of home ownership that could only have occurred by building on cheap land on the urban fringe and the greater mobility provided by the automobile — have been major contributors to the democratization of prosperity. Throughout the first world, from the United States to Western Europe and Japan, poverty levels have fallen markedly as more households take part in the quality of life mainstream. Women have been liberated to become near-equal economic players and low income households, including many that are African-American or Hispanic, have entered the middle class and beyond.

Yet, for years, much of the planning community has exhibited an inestimable contempt for the lifestyles that have been chosen by most households. The Puritan planners have identified this once-in-a-lifetime chance to force their confession of faith on everyone else.

This is evident, for example in a new Brookings Institution report (Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America purporting to demonstrate that GHG emissions are higher in the suburbs than in more dense cores. Using this debatable conclusion — directly at odds with the findings of the Australian Conservation Foundation’s far more extensive study (Australian Conservation Atlas) (Note 1) — they jump from rhetoric to their time honored litany of anti-mobility, anti-home ownership and pro-poverty commandments, skipping right over the economic analysis that any disciplined analysis of trades-off would require.

The article is painful in that it does not address what happens if we do not successfully address climate change, that is wreck the planet, and thinks that there is some mythical balance point where economic interests can “properly” be balanced with environmental interests.

There is also this paper which comments, back in 2008, on the cause of the global financial crisis. The causes were apparently profligate lending by banks and, get this, planning restrictions on land.

Not fraud and the greed of Wall Street and the Merchant Banking sector but too much lending and not enough land.

This belief, that we only have to open up land supply and all will be fine, is not the sole preserve of Pavletich.

National leader Simon Bridges thinks the same. Again from the Radio New Zealand article:

National Party leader Simon Bridges said the main driver of house prices was the lack of land for new homes.

“We’ve artificially constrained land,” he said.

“Were the government today to come up with a comprehensive RMA [Resource Management Act] reform on both planning and the environment, we would be collaborative on that.

If the RMA is such a problem I do not understand why National did not solve this problem during its last term in Parliament.

Auckland Councillor Greg Sayers has also claimed that limitations on urban spread are the problem and has written a book claiming that Auckland has to dump the ideology of a compact city and spread out and grow to make housing affordable.

Are they right? Is the restricting of land supply causing increasing house prices and worsening urban performance?

Greater Auckland has this very credible critique of an earlier report from Demographia. From its post:

This raises a quite obvious question: Why are people willing to pay so much more to live in some places? Why live in “unaffordable” San Francisco when “affordable” Houston is just down the road? Why live in Auckland when housing is relatively cheaper in Dunedin?

Urban economists have studied this phenomenon in detail, and observed that there is an omitted variable in Demographia’s equation: the differing amenities offered by different cities. If a city offers good natural amenities or consumer amenities, people will be willing to pay more to live there. Conversely, if a place isn’t particularly nice, people won’t be willing to pay much for houses there. (Common sense, really.)

And the failure to make any allowance for how unsustainable and how environmentally damaging sprawl is creates I believe a major weakness in Pavletich’s analysis.

As said by Greater Auckland:

If we wanted to accomplish that, we’d have to destroy most of the things that make great cities great. This might make housing cheaper, but it wouldn’t make us any better off in a broader sense. That’s because it would require us to:


Bulldoze the Waitakere Ranges and use the spoil to fill in the Hauraki Gulf – to ensure that Auckland didn’t have any natural advantages over a flat, inland city like Hamilton.
Dynamite the historic boulevards of Paris and replace them with American-style subdivisions and malls – to ensure that Paris didn’t offer anything that Houston doesn’t.
Ban any venture capital or startup activity in San Francisco, to ensure that it doesn’t offer any agglomeration economies that don’t exist in Detroit.
Build large screens over sunny cities like Tauranga and Brisbane – to ensure that they don’t have nicer weather than Moscow or Toronto.


But Demographia’s not aware of this. Their analysis is overly simplistic. The only thing it reveals is the authors’ grievous failure to understand the basics of urban economics. It’s no wonder that Demographia has never tried to have its studies peer reviewed or published in academic journals. Their claims aren’t supported by any valid conceptual model

Well said.  If we want to save the Ranges and we want to improve the quality of urban centres then urban sprawl, with the attendant need for motorways and infrastructure, is the last thing that we should be doing.  We should aspire to be like Paris, not Houston.

35 comments on “Housing affordability and urban form ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. soddenleaf 1
    21 January 2019 at 3:23 pm

    Agreed. flat sprawling cities are the problem. Go up. And stop investing into a volcanic farm… …sorry… Auckland.

    • Wayne 1.1
      21 January 2019 at 4:34 pm

      The main exemplar used by demographic is Houston, which does just expand out, but then it is basically flat.

      I would say Pavletich is partly right. There is a huge amount of land in Takanini and Clevedon as well in the west around Kumeu and Waimaku that could be readily developed. I suspect most of the people in the south would work in the south and in the west in the west and in Albany. The restrictions imposed by the council are too tight.

      Expansion in those areas would hardly destroy the character of Auckland, but would provide a lot more choices. Sir Bob Harvey, when he was Mayor, was advocating that kind of expansion in the North West.

      Single level houses are way faster to build than multilevel units and apartments. 350 meters to 400 meters works for a section.

      • Draco T Bastard 1.1.1
        21 January 2019 at 5:40 pm

        I would say Pavletich is partly right.

        That’s probably because you’re as economically literate as he is.

        There is a huge amount of land in Takanini and Clevedon as well in the west around Kumeu and Waimaku that could be readily developed.

        Who’s going to pay for that development? Because it sure as hell isn’t the developers.

        Just more costs added to the council for added profits of the developers.

        Single level houses are way faster to build than multilevel units and apartments.

        Really?
        [Citation needed]

        I know, I shall use Google:
        Decision Time
        Should I Build a Single-Story or Two-Story House?

        Expect to pay more. Per square foot, a one-story house is more costly to build than a two-story home. There is a larger footprint, meaning more foundation building and more roofing materials. And because the plumbing and heating/AC systems need to extend the length of the house, you’ll need bigger (and costlier) systems.

        I know it’s not speed but cost is also important.

        Or perhaps the problem is that we’re still not making full use of the latest technologies:

        The Izodom elements are large and light. The basic “brick” has a surface area of 0.5 m² and weighs 1.8 to 4.8 kg before concreting (depending on the element width). Pouring the wall with concrete, it is possible to finish 4.5 m² of wall (raw state) in an hour. This solution is 6 times faster in comparison to traditional post and beam structure and insulation of walls.

        3D printed houses fall into this as well.

        In fact, I’d say that the governments best option is to bring in or develop the latest tech so that houses and apartments can be built a hell of a lot faster.

      • WeTheBleeple 1.1.2
        22 January 2019 at 8:09 am

        Just once say something intelligent.

      • Sacha 1.1.3
        22 January 2019 at 10:58 am

        One of Waitakere’s major problems that Harvey began to address as mayor is that workers living out West do *not* have jobs there to go to, so they stream out of the area and back each day (with inadequate transport options).

        New Lynn’s transit-oriented town centre redevelopment is a great long-term initiative that he led, though sadly single-level big box retailers are now infesting promising areas like Lincoln Rd and Westgate.

        Manukau council put more effort into fostering industrial zones under Barry Curtis so there are indeed more jobs in the south for those who live nearby and fit that sort of work.

        Fostering new high-value enterprises and jobs is a big challenge for both those parts of the region.

      • Visubversa 1.1.4
        23 January 2019 at 8:27 pm

        You would be surprised at the numbrs of people who commute from the North Shore to South Auckland. The jobs are in Takanini or Manukau – the nice white suburbs are in Takkers etc, as are the hight decile schools. Same with the West, there is a huge exodus of commuters to the south and to the CBD. Single houses may be a bit faster, but they are not an efficient use of the land in many places. Where you have transit routes, you need the population density to support them. Integration of Land Use and Transit 101.

    • lprent 1.2
      21 January 2019 at 5:00 pm

      Having lived in several other cities and towns around NZ, I can tell you that the Demographica analysis is that of a self-obsessed fool. Building on the outskirts of a city just costs the existing ratepayers and taxpayers far far more in producing the infrastructure for all of those new houses than increasing existing densities.

      Neither the new residents nor the property developers pay for it. The upfront costs are directly provided as a subsidy via debt from the existing tax payers and are never able to be fully recouped by those who provide them. Moreover providing those funds is in direct conflict with the need to maintain and improve the capacity of existing infrastructure.

      The reason why I view Hugh Pavletich as just being another unthinking misguided nutter is because if the full costs of the required greenfield infrastructure were loaded on to the rates and taxes of the new owners of urban sprawl, then they probably never be able to pay for their properties.

      Whereas where increased densities within existing brownfields are used instead the costs of incremental upgrades to existing infrastructure are usually (but not always) far far cheaper both for the developer and for the city and state.

      But I’m afraid that your analysis is also somewhat foolish as well.

      The reason that this volcanic farm keeps drawing the skilled into it is the same reason why other large cities worldwide keep getting larger populations and why smaller centers don’t grow nearly at the same relative speed (and are usually losing their young).

      Having skilled people and businesses clustering helps to bring the kinds of mutually supporting support structures together that produce produce much higher qualities of businesses than can be achieved in sparser civic centers.

      It means that if you (for instance) wanted to find a engineering company to develop develop and produce a chassis for a product, a Auckland company could find a source in Auckland. Rather than (for an example I’m aware of) having to go from Invercargill to Christchurch to achieve much the same quality of result. I could go on with examples that I’m aware of.

      Furthermore having more businesses of the much the same type clustered together makes it far far easier for skilled employees to find jobs elsewhere in the city, cross pollinating companies developments and processes as they move.

      This also feeds out into the wider civic economy with all of those support companies and people

      For nearly two decades I thought that computers and networks would be a game changer. And they are. However they wound up just slowing the trend rather than reversing it.

      When I was doing purely internet international software hosted on server farms close to our most profitable offshore markets. We still used a hell of a lot of local to Auckland high skill services and infrastructure that would have been nigh well impossible to achieve when I was working in Dunedin.

      When I started to move running my code on high-end hardware, the same kind of limits began to become even more obvious. While we would have to take a place in a slow queue for testing RF emissions at the local test companies, at least they were here. If a badly protected wire or a software service was an issue we could usually fix immediately with a minimal turn around within hours and retest. If we’d been in a smaller center and had to do the same thing in a different city, it’d have been impossible to hit the contracted deadlines.

      Simple employment opportunities from skill clusters is why since 2005 the urban population of Auckland has jumped from about 1,242,880 to about 1,582,028 in 2019 – roughly an increase of 340,000 people. That is a bit less than the total population of Christchurch city or more than the population of Wellington + Dunedin combined.

      I can’t see any reason why it would reduce. While we have gotten about 50% of nett immigration through that same time period, a large part of the increase is from migration from the rest of NZ seeking the type of work that they want. Among the kiwi born in Auckland or my age, I am that rarity – a native Aucklander.

      On the other hand, Auckland isn’t exactly a great place to raise farming exports or extract change from tourists. Or for that matter as a place to retire – which I may to do some day.

      It is a bloody expensive place to live, especially with the levels of tax we wind up paying on our small plots of land. Personally I think that if we could just retain more of those taxes here rather than providing them to help maintain roads for tourists and milk-trucks we wouldn’t have as many problems with growing pains.

      • Gosman 1.2.1
        22 January 2019 at 8:37 am

        Hasn’t the Auckland City council attempted to get increased housing intensification through and it was vigorously opposed ?

      • soddenleaf 1.2.2
        22 January 2019 at 11:36 am

        A volcano will eventually emerge. This does not mean we should build a little further away, they can get quite big. The problem is like a Londoner I actively go round people being boring, standing in the way, it’s big city thing. Auckland should get upgraded where necessary, like public transit to get the people out fast when the volcano comes. But it’s no Sydney. Lived there also. It’s the region’s, there are enough small towns, just the intercity infrastructure is jus so poor, there still isn’t a dual carriageway between the biggest city and the capital… …there is private profit on the transport between towns… …there is no protection for small business or farmers who are forced to sell up to big corps, farmers who sell their whole supply to a big Corp and so kill any chance of competition, small shops who can not compete with global Corp subsides for oil, for big business, for big retail. Geez even council wont create center spaces, covered, for markets and push up rents that only big Corp subsidized can pay. it’s called a industrial park subsidized by council for big businesses but do the same for small holders not on your nelly.

  2. Blazer 2
    21 January 2019 at 3:29 pm

    Mr Bridges-‘is like a eunuch in a harem,he knows how it’s done, he’s seen it done every day, but he’s unable to do it himself’-B.Behan.

    • soddenleaf 2.1
      22 January 2019 at 11:40 am

      bRidges needs any publicity, even will alledgely leak his own spending a few days early so he can blame everyone and sneak a peek at his mps phones. oh, and the glorious snafu with… …it’s all crap for the presence building, he’ll start behaving in a year’s time.

  4. ropata 4
    21 January 2019 at 3:33 pm

    Pavletich thinks endless sprawl is going to be a silver bullet. I respect his motives, clearly he wants houses to be affordable, but his solution is wrongheaded. No doubt most advocates of infinite sprawl are financiers, land bankers and capital gain farmers. The solution is more regulation, not less.

    https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/10/15/1539577800000/No–the-housing-crisis-will-not-be-solved-by-building-more-homes/

    The [problem] is financialisation – and it is not an aberration, according to Ryan-Collins. The ‘housing crisis’ needs to be understood primarily as a product of the banking system.

    For starters it’s not just a British problem; this is a trend which has gripped developed economies across the world over the past three decades.

    “Two of the key ingredients of contemporary capitalist societies, private home ownership and a lightly regulated commercial banking system, are not mutually compatible,” he writes. Instead they “create a self-reinforcing feedback cycle”.

  5. Siobhan 5
    21 January 2019 at 3:38 pm

    Yes, lets be like Paris….

    “And in another contrast between Paris and the rest of France, apartment prices in the capital have shot up by 45 percent since 2009, compared to 9.5 percent in the rest of the country.
    In less than 10 years the average price of property has gone up by 33 percent and since the year 2000 the value of apartments in Paris have tripled.”

    “Paris, with an average purchase price for an apartment of €446,982, has become an exclusive city, reserved for high earners (management and liberal professions), who now account for 46 percent of purchasers.

    “At the same time, the percentage of workers and employees buying apartments has halved, from 13.9 percent to 6.8 percent.”

    https://www.citymetric.com/business/chart-why-french-government-wants-tackle-paris-s-housing-crisis

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-politics/macron-targets-french-welfare-spending-as-deficit-pressure-rises-idUSKCN1LA0S5

    https://www.thelocal.fr/20180719/rent-prices-in-paris-soar-in-six-months-since-rent-caps-binned

  6. Draco T Bastard 6
    21 January 2019 at 5:10 pm

    And the failure to make any allowance for how unsustainable and how environmentally damaging sprawl is creates I believe a major weakness in Pavletich’s analysis.

    Such ‘researchers’, like National, can’t go round drawing attention to the facts that prove them wrong. Sprawl, like this bunch of idiots (and National) want costs far more than a compact city:

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-true-costs-of-sprawl/article15218154/
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/suburban-sprawl-costs-billions-more-20090716-dmxj.html

    The costs fall upon councils and not just the poor people living so far away from friends, family, schools, and work. Which means that the councils will have to put up rates to cover them. These rate increases that are the result of these demands for more sprawl will, of course, have the same idiots telling us that rates are too high.

    Of course, all that extra cost also comes through in extra profit which is what they’re really after. And that shows, once again, that profit is the worst possible motive for directing an economy.

  7. greywarshark 7
    21 January 2019 at 6:00 pm

    Just a thought about the sort of housing that people like Hugh Pavletich don’t erect for the middle and upper classes. But they become the housing of last resort by the low income people.

    Housing heights make a big difference to enjoyable ‘livability’ when there is an attempt to provide stacked housing units, in locations that are integrated into jobs, school, community centres, services.

    (https://www.roblightbody.com/jeely-piece-song.html

    • In Vino 7.1
      21 January 2019 at 7:32 pm

      I have lived in apartment blocks in Germany (15 months) and France (18 months) in cities of a comparable population to Auckland at the time, but taking up far less area. Good lifestyle – no regrets at all. Springtime in Germany was the first time I ever appreciated a walk in a beautiful park on a fine spring day with hordes of other people who had also been cooped up in apartments all winter. (Never needed that here in NZ.) But as I say, no regrets, and here in NZ I miss many of the superior things I had back in Europe. Quality television, newspapers/magazines…

      Face it – NZ. It has already happened in most other advanced countries, and with growing population it HAS to happen here too. The evils of urban sprawl were explained to us back in the 70s. As said above, only the profiteers (developers, land bankers and capital gains farmers) gain out of current policy. We have to come into the modern world and give up the house-lawn-garden dream. If we do not go up instead of outwards, Auckland’s gridlock will worsen and spread elsewhere. along with all those other problems.
      And I agree with lprent: current ratepayers should not be paying for infrastructure for areas that current profiteers (see last paragraph) ought to be paying for.

      • greywarshark 7.1.1
        21 January 2019 at 9:26 pm

        I commented on housing heights making a difference. In thie above link they are talking of apartments high in the air. perhaps 30 floors. I was thinking of
        perhaps six. What height are the apartment blocks you are thinking of El Vino?
        And were you there with a family, and also young children?

        • In Vino 7.1.1.1
          21 January 2019 at 11:34 pm

          I was not with children , but my partner and I had a friend who was OK with a child. The blocks were 6 or 7-storey.. I agree that poorly-planned big tenement blocks as they made in parts of Britain are disastrous, but there is little need for NZ to move that far immediately. To my mind, the idea that everyone should have a house, lawn and garden is what has to go with population increase.

          • greywarshark 7.1.1.1.1
            22 January 2019 at 10:08 am

            In Vino because your last sentence can be read two ways, I take it that you mean that the house, lawn and garden has to go because population increase means that there isn’t enough land for it.

            I just throw in as an aside that where I lived in Kilburn in North London when I was there, I was in one of a line of two or three storey houses, split up into apartments of different sizes, that had a small back yard and in the back fence was a gate leading to an open area where games could be played, a public-private playground. I don’t know whether that is better than going to public playgrounds.

            From DTB quote: there are many ways to cope with not having a backyard. “You can go to the park, meet new people and socialise your child.
            As for living in an apartment with our dog, Tessa, she might not have a backyard, but she goes out every morning and afternoon and probably socialises with more dogs than most do while on her walks and trips to the park.”

            I notice how it refers to going to the park with your child, instead of having a backyard. It is definitely a step down that there is no place for a child to play close by the dwelling safely and unaccompanied. Parents who are harried and harassed by our government to do paid work and try to fulfil their parental role, don’t have time to accompany their children out to play.

            The person commenting puts more emphasis on matching her dog’s needs than children’s needs.

        • Draco T Bastard 7.1.1.2
          22 January 2019 at 12:42 am

          How families with kids can live happily in apartments

          Edwards said there are many ways to cope with not having a backyard. “You can go to the park, meet new people and socialise your child. As for living in an apartment with our dog, Tessa, she might not have a backyard, but she goes out every morning and afternoon and probably socialises with more dogs than most do while on her walks and trips to the park.”

          IMO, apartment living is far better for the kids. More socialisation due to being around the community all the time.

          Apartment living is what councils should be designing around. Ensuring good parks that are engaging for kids and adults that ensure good socialising.

          • lprent 7.1.1.2.1
            22 January 2019 at 1:26 pm

            Also good from troglodyte programmers.

            I have been living in a one bedroom apartment for most of the last 20 years (with a year house sitting in a villa and two years in townhouse renting while a documentary was being finished). It is one of 60 in a 3 story block (plus two levels of car park). It has high ceilings (> 10 ft) and a simple space. We have Western park just up the road. Over the last two decades the shops have all moved into easy walking distance. Supermarket a few blocks over and Bunnings down the road. Plus the whole of Ponsonby Rd and K Rd on the corner.

            It is a great place to live. The first decade I was on my own. For about seven years two of us have been there. And now a kitten has started to disrupt us.

            But I grew up in 3-4 bedroom suburban houses and on farms. I’d have to say that the maintenance of property and grounds was just a continual distraction. It seemed like we were always renovating or upgrading something. The lawns were a continual nuisance and often even as kids we barely used them. We used a neighborhood berm a hell of a lot more.

            I wouldn’t live any other way apart from apartments if I was living in town. Sure I’d like one with a little more space (this one is just 55 sq meters), and probably a spare bedroom / office. But that is about all I’d change. Problem is that typically those sizes aren’t built. Apartments tend to be built as 3 tiny bedrooms for rentals or as studio apartments like I have. Or they have bloody expensive crap like lifts, gyms, pools that I’d seldom want to use or pay body corp fees for.

    • ropata 7.2
      22 January 2019 at 12:14 am

      @wrathofgnon is awesome for those interested in human scale urbanism…
      https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/883181352933236736

  8. ropata 8
    21 January 2019 at 7:31 pm

    The problem with Auckland’s Unitary Plan and governance in general is that it’s captured by a noisy, well-resourced NIMBY minority
    https://twitter.com/BenThomasNZ/status/1087074984457981952

    Bernard Hickey and Tau Henare rightly criticise the Coalition Government for not attacking the housing crisis with ALL the weapons at its disposal, instead opting for neoliberal “fiscal responsibility” and halfway measures.
    https://twitter.com/bernardchickey/status/1086493929833283584

  9. WeTheBleeple 9
    22 January 2019 at 8:29 am

    When you go over four or five stories you have all sorts of air quality issues that I would not live with.

    Let’s not be retrospective fools like these guys

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265039674_A_risk-based_study_of_air_quality_in_high-rise_buildings_health_effects

    They suck up air off city streets to pump into your floor. Yay.

    Now the GFC.

    I think you’ll find synthetics killed the global financials, but don’t worry, the banks will talk shit about it and do it all again.

    I buy a house. You buy a house, he buys a house, she buys a house. We have four houses.

    Speculator A thinks your properties will do well and bets on this. Speculator B thinks you will default on your mortgages. So they bet on your failure. Perhaps they know the reserve bank is about to jack interest, perhaps your industry is on the rocks and you don’t know it yet. Wise speculators know these things. They grow fat off your failures.

    Here it get’s interesting. Speculator C, we’ll call him John as this is where the BS really gets spun:

    John bets that Speculator B’s bet on your failure is wrong. He believes the mortgages will get paid and so he places a bet on the bet they placed. Speculator C bets on John’s bet, so if the mortgages fail speculator B gets paid, john misses out, speculator C gets paid. And the mortgage owner…. what the fuck do they matter? Layer after layer of speculative bullshit from the men who do nothing for society.

    The mortgages are given out to people with poor credit, with no credit, with debt. It doesn’t matter the banks sell the paper derivatives of mortgages the real estate guys keep signing on deals and banks package these in piece of shit bonds. The regulators keep it all afloat by doing and saying nothing the taxpayers ultimately lose their homes, life savings, credit ratings, hope, engagement in society, tax dollars…

    The government then takes fuckloads more money off the workers and ex-mortgagees to give to the banks who have suffered terribly.

  10. Sabine 10
    22 January 2019 at 10:31 am

    Amenities are nice if you have the money to afford them. And to do that you need a job. And you wont find a job in the 80% of NZ that have not grown a single job in about 20 years.
    So people move to AKL because this is where they can get a job that is a. full time, b. not seasonal, c. pays above min wage.

    Once the highly paid members of parliament of all stripes and persuasions manage to wrap their minds around the concept that people need wages to buy anything, they can start fixing the problem.

    Create jobs in places not called Auckland and watch people move to these places. Do nothing much as was done for the last twenty years and you will be writing the same screed again and again.

  11. Heather Grimwood 11
    22 January 2019 at 11:22 am

    I see little reference to urban sprawl and its aggressive takeover of agricultural land. Decades ago I watched in disbelief as strawberry fields and market gardens on outskirts of Auckland disappeared. Latterly I grieve at same fate of lush farmland adjoining Mosgiel, and this will be going on in many areas of New Zealand.
    Expansion in form of sprawl is the result of greed and only sensible imaginative town planning can solve the problems of providing housing and recreational areas for a growing population.

  12. cleangreen 12
    22 January 2019 at 11:35 am

    Yes Micky In this issue there is much more to the story than it appears and we have been part of the truth and reasdon why the issue is very complex.

    My Son is engaged to a german ladty 31 yrs old and she and him were forced to leave NZ although he is a Napier born skilled Electrician in short suppply and asked immigration if his fiancee could owork when she came here and married my son but ommigration told him not to apply for her work permit.

    He got his Electrical company employer to meet with the Hastings National Party MP who covers Hastings/Tuki tuki region and he said he could not help.

    So we went to Stuart Nash (Napioer Labour MP) with a ‘parental letter asking Labour for ‘compassion consideration’ on grounds we elderly couple are needing him here to assist in our affairs and let his fiancee work please!!!!

    Stuart Nash came back saying he could not help.

    See this video on this to show labour fucked up here now after the ‘Czech criminal’ was let in to stay and deal drugs when my son was on the “skilled tradesmans liist” could not be allowed to have his fiancee come here to work??????

    We are loosing our best youmng now and labour need to get rid of “their advisors” as they are national cling-ons and will destroy labour here too.

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/10/it-s-disgusting-napier-electrician-fumes-at-czech-drug-lord-karel-sroubek-s-nz-residency.html?fbclid=IwAR0jbUfhltztKXQ1QT7ZRRYt-dF7k-vrU6fpI8q9mHz6s3F7f48UBdgbIPg

  13. rata 13
    22 January 2019 at 12:46 pm

    Why are New Zealanders obsessed with home ownership?
    Too much stress.
    Not wort it.

  14. Philj 14
    22 January 2019 at 9:28 pm

    Hugh Pavletich is the perfect example of why NZ is in the mess that it is. I can’t take his argument seriously. … And when the last tree is cut down…? you go and sharpen your axe ? Really…