Bradford Sue: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Bradford Sue: Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill through its second reading and remaining stages in the House today. I have to say however that ours is somewhat lukewarm support. Although we are keen to see local councils encouraged to support the development of affordable housing within their districts and to end the use of covenants designed to restrict the availability of affordable housing within developments we believe that this bill is a missed opportunity in terms of doing something a lot more meaningful. 
We have a housing crisis in this country right now. Just a couple of weeks ago I took part in a hui on housing in Northland at which representatives of numerous iwi and community organisations talked about the realities of increasing numbers of forced mortgagee sales sometimes because of ridiculously low actual arrears. They talked of private rentals being too high for people to afford even in traditionally low-cost areas like Kaitaia and Kaikohe and of people living under canvas and in sheds caravans and other insecure and inadequate forms of shelter because those were their only options. 
This morning the  
New Zealand Herald  
carried the story of Auckland City councillor Paul Goldsmith who is asking Parliament to widen police powers to allow them to forcibly move rough sleepers along. At the same time Diane Robertson from the Auckland City Mission talked about the problem in a rather more productive way saying that the real answer is to give people somewhere adequate and appropriate to live. Both responses highlight the problems of people sleeping out in Auckland City. It is not a new issue but it is one that does not look like going away any time soon unless there is a concerted response from the Government local government and the community sector to ensure that the housing needs of those most in need are met. 
Councillor Goldsmith’s “blame the victim” response is as old as time. It is reminiscent of Beijing’s recent clearance of its streets and slums for the Olympics or closer to home of the bid to remove the homeless from the streets parks and open spaces of Auckland when APEC came to town in 1999. 
The need for safe secure healthy and affordable housing starts at this extreme end with those who are literally homeless and out on the streets right now—and there are many more of them in Aotearoa in 2008 than some might imagine—and it goes through to those who are among the 9000 or 10000 households on the State house waiting lists to those who are living in substandard or inadequate housing but cannot get on the waiting lists at all and to those who are working as hard as they can but are failing to get together the money to buy a home. The inability of so many to afford or to access accommodation either rented or bought is a reality that this and the next Government must face. 
This bill takes a very small step towards at least enabling local territorial authorities to implement and enforce affordable housing policies in new developments where they have the will to do so. It was interesting to see that so many local government submitters had doubts about the bill although I have to say that a lot of these seemed to be driven more by fears of the costs of taking up affordable housing plans rather than by any analysis of the bill’s inadequacies in terms of meeting real housing needs. In the Auckland region for example five out of six councils opposed the bill with only the Waitakere City Council supporting it while taking the position that the bill should go further and make affordable housing compulsory for all districts. 
Other organisations found the bill inadequate too. For example the Salvation Army opposed the bill despite its unquestionable interest in and commitment to affordable housing. It submitted that it saw the bill as lacking in terms of containing any particularly meaningful response to the crisis it deals with daily through its social services arms. Like the Waitakere City Council the Salvation Army sought among other things a requirement that local authorities must give consideration to local housing affordability issues in their planning and policy development. 
The Green Party came very close to opposing the bill as well but in the end we decided that we would continue to support it partly because of some small improvements achieved at the Local Government and Environment Committee and partly because anything that supports and encourages councils to at least consider the development of affordable housing has to be better than nothing. We also see the clause on covenants with the improvement made at the select committee as being critical. Clause 35(1) now states: “A covenant over land is void if one of its purposes is to stop the provision of affordable housing or social housing on the land.” We are keen to ensure that this becomes law as soon as possible. 
However what we would really like to see soon is a major commitment from the Government to real solutions. The Greens like the Waitakere City Council and the Salvation Army would like to see all local councils adopt housing affordability policies along with a greater commitment to land banking and to the retention of any social housing that they already own. We would like the Housing New Zealand Corporation local councils and the community sector to work together to increase the social housing stock available in areas of need that is provided through all three sectors. 
The private market is not able to meet the housing needs of everyone in this country as is all too apparent at present. We believe that both central government and local government have a responsibility to take a lead on these issues. Central government funding should be available to assist local councils to carry out effective planning and to meet social housing needs but this funding should not be available unless they have developed an affordable housing plan in genuine consultation with their local community. I hope that the next time we are discussing an affordable housing bill in this Parliament it will be a lot more serious than the one in front of us today.