Bradford Sue: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — First Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is pleased to be supporting the first reading of the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill which is in front of us this morning. As I think every political party in this House realises and accepts barriers to homeownership are huge at present and the percentage of people in this country owning rather than renting their housing is dropping all the time.  
Like other members here I am sitting on the Commerce Committee’s affordable housing inquiry at present where we are hearing a large number of excellent submissions all stressing the enormity of the problem we face and the complexity and range of possible solutions. I find it very ironic that Mr Heatley and Dr Mapp from the National Party are opposing this bill given that National actually called for the housing affordability inquiry and like the rest of us it has been hearing the realities of what is going on out there. This bill at least presents us with one small and rather tentative part of the answer.  
In respect of this I am glad that the Minister and the Government have seen fit to change the name of the bill to more accurately reflect the limited scope of what it seeks to achieve. In its original form the bill was labelled the Affordable Housing Bill. One of my main objections at that point was to the fact that the name was rather grandiose in the context of legislation that attempts to achieve only a very small incremental and non-binding improvement to one aspect of a much larger crisis. I was concerned that somehow the Government was conveying the impression that it could sort out the housing affordability problem with just one bill perhaps for political or tactical reasons but I am sure that this would have backfired when people realised its limitations. So I commend the Minister and the Government’s common sense in bringing the title back to a more realistic reflection of what the bill might hope to achieve.  
The Green Party certainly supports the underlying purpose of this bill which is to enable local authorities to develop and implement affordable housing policies in relation to new developments. I have been aware for some years now of the sterling efforts being made in the Queenstown district by its local council and others in the community there to try to turn back the tide on its becoming simply an enclave for the wealthy. That district has had a crisis for decades with the shortage of affordable and available accommodation for workers and their families. For example a recent study found that someone on the average income in the Queenstown Lakes district of around $63000 or $1227 a week would spend about $900 a week servicing an interest-only mortgage on a low-end house in the area—with “low-end” being around the $500000 mark. With tax as well the homebuyer would have only a few dollars left to live on.  
In response to this situation the council is working hard at strategies to help homebuyers both through the council’s partnering with a local housing trust and the Housing New Zealand Corporation to work on a new affordable housing scheme and through plans to add new rules definitions and incentives to develop affordable housing for over 2000 households by 2016. I commend the Queenstown Lakes District Council for its progressive and far-sighted efforts.  
I contrast these with the attitude of the new Auckland City Council which seems to have the opposite approach despite Auckland also having one of the biggest problems with unaffordable housing in the country. A meeting is happening in Auckland today I believe that will evidently decide whether to break an affordable housing contract that the council signed up to earlier this year when it formed a partnership with the New Zealand Housing Foundation to build about a hundred affordable homes over the next 5 years. This is trifling compared with what Queenstown is attempting to achieve but even this small worthy progressive first step by Auckland City may be doomed because of John Banks’ apparent commitment to reverse any socially responsible policies now that he is in charge again. And this is despite the fact that although Auckland prices might not be quite as bad as Queenstown’s it does take nearly a whole average wage to pay off an average mortgage on an average house in the Auckland region.  
I understand that one of the motivating factors for the Government in bringing forward this bill at this time is that the Queenstown Lakes District Council may have run into some legal and technical difficulties in being able to do anything about requiring developers to include affordable housing in their plans. I think it is great that this bill aims to break the deadlock over this and that where a council has a will it will be able to go through with its planning once this bill goes through. Councils will have legal certainty about pushing forward with planning which is so important.  
At the moment it is apparent that the regulatory tools available to councils including the Local Government Act 2002 do not directly address the issue of affordable housing. This bill will allow those territorial authorities who choose to do so to develop an affordable housing policy that specifies what actions a developer may be required to undertake on the one hand and what the council must do on the other hand to help compensate the developer—for example through excusing payment of development contributions having rates remission policies providing direct funding assistance or applying things like a density bonus. Before a council can do any of that it has carry out a housing needs assessment and consult the community about the development of an affordable housing policy.  
The Green Party thinks that all this is grand. Our only problem with it is that it is completely optional and that only some councils will choose to go down this path. I am sure Queenstown will take the lead and I hope it will be followed quickly by places like Wellington and Christchurch which seem to have a comparatively progressive attitude towards accepting that there is a council role in helping to house the local citizenry. However in places like Auckland City Rodney Northland and others I fear we might see quite a different approach despite a very high housing need among low and middle income earners in those districts.  
The Green Party believes that housing is a fundamental social good and that it is a basic human right for all citizens and residents not just for some. We believe that not only central government but also local government must play a leading role in developing policies that ensure that everyone has their basic housing needs met through either renting or buying their homes. Therefore although we will be supporting this aspect of the bill as far as it goes we would prefer it if the Government were to go a lot further.  
We believe that all local councils should develop affordable housing policies after undertaking needs assessments and consulting well with all stakeholders. All councils where a housing need is identified should be required to put together policies that require developers to facilitate the provision of affordable housing as per the trade-offs allowed for in this bill. All councils should also be willing to facilitate the release of surplus land to help with future land supply for community and State sector housing and where need exists they should also be actively building more housing themselves and supporting community sector social housing initiatives. Thus our main problem with this bill is not with what it sets out to do but with the fact that it does not go anywhere near far enough.  
One further aspect of this bill that I have not mentioned so far is the element that brings to an end restrictive covenants on developments that attempt to exclude any or all affordable housing from those developments. This tool has been used with increasing frequency in the Auckland region. I am not sure about other areas but it is certainly a feature in our part of the world. Such covenants prevent the Housing New Zealand Corporation and other social housing providers from buying or leasing properties within a development. This means from the developers’ point of view of course that covenants are keeping property values high while keeping low and middle income people out. But from a social justice perspective they are increasing and rigidifying the gap between the haves and have-nots that sadly is already increasing in this country as it is in many parts of the world.  
In a small way this provision within the bill is a microcosm for a decision about which way we want Aotearoa to go. Do we want a future where the rich live safely within their gated communities and secure compounds and no riff-raff are allowed within the walls? Or do we want a country that still has some notion of social equity and a fair go for all? The Green Party totally supports the removal of the power to place exclusionary covenants on developments and I congratulate the Minister and the Government on taking this step.