6. Question No. 6—HousingCAMILLA BELICH (Labour) to the Minister of HousingQuestion No. 6—Housing6. CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) to the Minister of Housing: What reports has she seen on the performance of recently upgraded infrastructure during the recent Auckland floods?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): There is pleasing evidence from Kāinga Ora that the investment in our Government house build programme and our Auckland neighbourhood programme performed as designed and mitigated against further flooding impacts. Our upgrades of existing neighbourhoods include boosting infrastructure like pipes and improving flood resilience. In Kāinga Ora's Northcote development the recently completed upgrade to Greenslade Reserve transformed a sports field into a stormwater retention basin with 12 million litres of water held back from the nearby town centre and surrounding homes and draining overnight. Similarly in the Roskill development upgrades to Freeland Reserve—funded by the Government shovel-ready infrastructure fund—which was completed in 2022 acted as a detention wetland that mitigated stormwater for about two-thirds of the Roskill South neighbourhood by capturing millions of litres of water. Camilla Belich: What is still to be done to improve infrastructure and flood resilience in these large-scale housing developments? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: There is a lot more work to be done as upgraded neighbourhoods in Tāmaki Northcote Māngere Oranga and Roskill are built out with more than a billion dollars in total infrastructure being spent including more than half a billion dollars for stormwater and other flood mitigation works. The Northcote and Roskill large-scale developments are further along than other projects so have seen the benefit of the upgrades made already. Had the flooding occurred five years ago the flooding impacts on these neighbourhoods would have been much worse. In Māngere where development is at an early stage with thousands of homes to be built in the coming years more than $200 million is earmarked for flood mitigation work. Camilla Belich: How is the Government contributing to infrastructure upgrades in these large-scale housing developments?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Our Government is making a significant investment in infrastructure upgrades to support the delivery of thousands of new homes across New Zealand. Through the $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund established in 2021 we're investing to increase the pace scale diversity and affordability of new housing supply for buyers and renters; $2.3 billion of this is set aside for the large-scale housing projects in Auckland like the Roskill and Māngere development as well as in Porirua in Wellington. A further $926 million from the $1 billion infrastructure acceleration fund has been allocated to projects across the country to support new or upgraded bulk infrastructure. The end result will be more homes and more resilient neighbourhoods and the ability to unlock even more land for further housing development.Camilla Belich: Does increasing housing density in major housing developments increase flood risk? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: When intensification is done right with appropriate stormwater infrastructure and water-sensitive design higher-density neighbourhoods experience the benefits of that. A good example is Hobsonville Point where thousands of homes have been built in the past decade and it has doubled the housing density of the average Auckland suburb. Despite recording some of the highest rainfall in the Auckland region during the flooding event it did not suffer any significant flooding or damage. This proves that higher-density suburbs designed well and at scale can improve resilience.