Lizard News DECEMBER 2023
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Te Puna • Whakamārama • Matakana Is • Ōmokoroa • Pahoia • Apata • Aongatete • Katikati • Tahāwai • Bowentown • Athenree • Waihī Beach
Housing, housing affordability, and housing supply By Alan Maxwell n Aotearoa, we have a crisis on many fronts with this issue. There is ample discussion on this topic, the whys, the where tos and the who’s to blame, but the reality is that this has been thirtyplus years in the making, created through our obsession with wealthbuilding through property in this country. Having just returned from the National Affordable Housing Hui in Auckland, where I was a keynote speaker, I have no doubt it will get worse before it gets better. Banks and the symbiotic relationship they have with property speculators are just too profitable for them to want anything to change. More record bank profits have just been declared. Unless the yet-to-be-formed government will actually make policy changes as to how property in NZ is managed, there is no incentive to replace this “property-forprofit” mindset with a more “housing is a human right” approach. Our statistics at a global level are nothing short of appalling. New Zealand’s price-to-income ratio is the worst in the OECD. Our house price-vs-rent/wages increase over the last twenty years is off the charts and is how we’ve dug this massive inequity hole around wealth and property ownership. Data from Stats NZ shows that household wealth inequality in New Zealand is significantly greater than income inequality. The richest 20% of households own around 184 times the median household wealth of the lowest 20%. As the top 10% of New Zealand households hold around 50% of New Zealand’s
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total household net worth, there is a strong argument that taxing some of this wealth is fair. Significant change will only come when significant policy changes are made. While I was the Community Activator for the Katikati Taiao, community workshops were held to look at this issue in Katikati. David Marshall, Vice-President of Grey Power NZ and long-time Katikati resident, had brought it to the attention of the Taiao that older people’s housing needs in Katikati were not being met, and this was causing significant stress on many elderly in the community and putting pressure on stock availability. Katikati has more than double the national average of retirees. They own 39% of the private dwellings, and 68% of those retiree dwellings are occupied by a single occupant. This translates to over 440 houses, most family homes with single occupants living in them. We sent out a survey to learn more. Of those surveyed, 70% expressed a strong desire to downsize but were unable to do so; finances and availability of smaller units were the biggest barriers. For retirees dependent on NZ Super as their primary income source, the banks will not consider bridging finance to allow them to downsize, effectively trapping them in unsuitable homes they cannot afford to maintain. Finding a practical solution to this dilemma would free up those larger homes for young families while relieving stress for retirees desperate to downsize to a manageable, warm home in their community. It seems crazy to keep building the
L-R: Alan Maxwell with Sam Stubbs the co-founder of Simplicity, an ethical Kiwisaver provider which invests in build to rent homes, and Western Bay District Council’s strategic housing lead Simone Cuers. PHOTO: Supplied.
wrong stock on what is very limited land space in Katikati. But the market is what drives the builds, not necessarily the needs of the community. Developers I have spoken to refer to high costs, lengthy resourcing processes, and a low return per unit in comparison to the one build of a large family home as drivers to discourage this type of unit build. One of the community dreams or aspirations that came from one workshop was to form a local community housing trust tasked with building small blocks of units, allowing retirees to downsize
into them. The trust would purchase their homes, becoming rental stock for the community. This would be community-led development at its best, a locally-led, collaborative approach to solve a significant issue in Katikati. It’s something I would love to see come to fruition. Alan Maxwell is a Kaitohutohu Hapori (Community Advisor) and works across the WBOP and Hauraki region. He is a member of the Katikati Housing Network and Child Poverty Action Group WBOP.