Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced yesterday changes to planning regulations, which include abolishing councils’ ability to set fixed urban-rural boundaries and minimum floor area sizes for developments.
The government will also require the 24 city, district, and unitary councils representing the largest cities to zone for 30 years of housing growth.
This covers larger cities like Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, as well as smaller cities such as Tauranga, Hamilton and Dunedin.
"Housing in New Zealand is too expensive, because we have made it very difficult for our cities to grow," Mr Bishop said.
Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich said the city was well-placed for growth as a result of recent changes to the city’s district plan, which allowed for more medium-density and greenfield housing development.
"The work we’ve already done will feed into the high-growth trajectory the government is looking for from councils and cater for the strong economic growth reported in recent days.
"Our district plan already provides sufficient housing capacity for the next 30 years, and we also already use a ‘high then medium’ growth projection.
"We’ll still need to consider future changes over time, and keep a watching brief as the changes role out, but right now we’re ahead of the game."
Developers and community housing providers were also looking forward to more detail.
"We’ve seen the impact upzoning has had in Auckland, in terms of putting downward pressure on housing costs.
"It’s positive that councils will be required to plan for higher growth projections, in terms of influencing greater supply, and allow for mixed use development.
"We absolutely need to build more houses, but we need to build them where it makes sense to do it, not just where it might suit a particular developer."
Habitat for Humanity group chief executive Alan Thorp was pleased.
The community housing provider has developed houses in Dunedin.
Mr Thorp said it was ready to "step up".
"We agree with the minister, the changes outlined today are a first step and there is a lot of work to be done."
TGC Homes general manager George Hercus said the devil would be in the detail.
However, in order for Dunedin to meet its growth projections, the city council needed to consent about 580 homes a year for the next decade — something he did not think was feasible under the present planning space.
"It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get resource consent, because the council are trying to balance more priorities.
"When the council is assessing an application, they don’t just have to consider the need for new housing; they need to balance the city’s heritage and amenity and character.
"It means there’s a lot more people involved to tick all the boxes and it also means the pathways to getting houses over the line have narrowed."
Urban economist Dr Stu Donovan said yesterday’s announcement was encouraging.
"It really signals a lot of intent to enable more housing — both up and out — and it provides some really important certainty for councils as well."
He said the changes would not necessarily lead to an easier consent process in the short term, but he hoped they would provide the right signals.
"Enabling more capacity will likely lead to simplifying resource consents — but we don’t have all the details yet."
Developer Roger Fewtrell, who hopes to build more than 70 affordable homes in Dunedin, said any liberalising of planning would help.
"Anything that makes it easier to build in higher density is a good thing.
"It’s about taking away the power of veto — making [councils] have to say yes, rather than no all the time.
"A lot of the directions sound like common sense to me."
