Garrick Tremain GOLD #housing

23 May 2017

In a statement provided to the Otago Daily Times Mr  Cull said it was not the council’s place to lead discussions, but it would be happy to take part in  Government-led discussions.

### ODT Online Sat, 20 May 2017
Affordable housing hitch
By Vaughan Elder
Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull has declined a request from local MPs and social agencies for the Dunedin City Council to lead a crisis meeting over a lack of affordable housing. This comes as a group of social agencies, including the Salvation Army and Presbyterian Support, agreed to a statement saying the situation was reaching or had reached “crisis point”. The group said rising rents were making it hard and sometimes impossible for people on low incomes  to find affordable rental properties. “We are seeing a trend of landlords ending and not renewing leases, which forces tenants into a rental market they often cannot afford.” Waiting lists for social housing were growing and more families were living in cars and garages or being put up in motels while they waited for social housing. The group, led by Dunedin South MP Clare Curran, called on the council to co-ordinate a city meeting focused on identifying the problems and finding short-term solutions. “We believe the Dunedin City Council can play a strong role given it provides social housing and that housing quality and availability is an objective of its social wellbeing strategy.” They also believed the  Government was not doing enough to remedy the problem and that it should be involved in finding a local solution to the problem.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

*Image: An idea promoted by the mayor: relocatables for managed retreat [Shadow Man 2013 – Matakishi’s tea house (detail) via matakishi.com]

Help to the Homeless, elsewhere #SocialEnterprise

C O L L I N G W O O D • M E L B O U R N E

Northumberland Development. Images: Grocon

### ArchitectureAU.com 7 June 2016
Wardle-designed new office tower lends hand to homeless
News | Words Linda Cheng
A proposed office tower development in Melbourne’s Collingwood designed by John Wardle Architects will provide assistance to the local homeless.
The development, dubbed Northumberland, will occupy the site of the existing Collingwood Telephone Exchange on Wellington Street – a red brick building which is to be retained. A 13-storey office tower and a 5-storey retail building with a cafe on the ground floor is proposed around and above the existing building. The design will take cues from the local industrial past, street patterns and material expression. The southern facade of the smaller retail building will be characterized by a sawtooth window facing Northumberland Street. The office tower will be set back from main street, Wellington Street, as well as the existing building, which will create a new laneway and general new public space. The design of the office building will target a 6-star Green Star rating.

The development will share its end of trip facilities with the homeless. The shower and change room facilities are designed with assistance from Launch Housing, a provider of housing and homeless support service. During hours of minimal use by office workers, showers and change room facilities in the office complex will be managed by the organization to provide clean and safe change facilities in support of local homeless people while sorting out their housing crisis. Northumberland will also be one of the first commercial buildings to contribute to the Homes for Homes initiative, a sustainable funding source for affordable housing established by The Big Issue in 2013.

Developer Grocon will contribute 0.1 percent annual office rent received to the fund. The proceeds will be used to refurbish and manage social housing for low-income and homeless people in Australia.

Grocon has submitted the design for planning approval. If approved, construction will commence in early 2017. The development will be located across the road from a proposed 13-storey apartment tower, also designed by John Wardle Architects and developed by Cbus. The proposal is currently being assessed by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). The matter was heard on 11 and 12 April but was adjourned until 14-15 July to allow for amendments to the plans.

ArchitectureAU Link | Captions

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A U C K L A N D

via Architecture + Women • New Zealand

Te Puea Marae. Image: RNZ/Shannon Haunui-Thompson

A+W•NZ & JASMAX ORGANISING TE PUEA MARAE DONATIONS
The media has been reporting recently that those without homes now include families who cannot afford the rising rents which accompany the increasing house prices in New Zealand, and especially in Auckland. To help address this issue, Te Puea Marae has generously opened its doors to the homeless, with other Marae and charities following their example.

While homelessness is mainly a political issue, it is also an architectural one, in that architects can offer solutions to our built environments and the use of them. Architects work on a daily basis within the financial structures which contribute to the high cost of housing, as well as with many clients who are involved at the coalface, from religious groups to social services and charities.

A+W•NZ has built some powerful networks and structures since its beginning five years ago. We thought that those networks can be put to good use by collecting blankets and food to donate to those being generous to others, starting with Te Puea Marae.

Te Puea Herangi is important to A+W•NZ as an early leader in her contribution to Maori architecture, establishing Tūrangawaewae Marae in Ngāruawāhia, central to the Kingitanga (King Movement). She went on to establish Marae throughout the Waikato (Mangatangi, Rakaumanga) carved houses (Turongo, Tamaoho), and to re-establish canoe building at Turangawaewae.

Jasmax Auckland has generously agreed to act as a collection point for all items donated, and the A+W•NZ team will deliver the goods to Te Puea Marae at intermittent times. Please take your donated goods to the reception at Jasmax, 2 Marston Street
Parnell, Auckland 1052, between 9am and 4pm Monday-Friday.

They will be gratefully receiving bedding, toiletries, non-perishable food, and clothing. If you have any problems or difficulties with drop off during those hours, please contact us at architecturewomen @gmail.com

A big thank you to Jasmax for providing the support required to receive and store donated goods. If you wish to make a financial donation directly to Te Puea Marae, a GiveALittle page has been set up by the Marae.

4:19 pm on 6 June 2016
RNZ News: Te Puea Marae finds homes for 21 Auckland families
The chair of an Auckland marae supporting the homeless is commending those who have had the courage to accept its help. Te Puea Memorial Marae has housed 21 families in just under two weeks and has helped some of them get paid jobs. Its chair, Hurimoana Dennis, says based on those outcomes, agencies helping the homeless cannot keep applying a business as usual approach. He believes a kaupapa Maori approach would be a key long-term solution for the current housing crisis. Mr Dennis said overcrowding, eviction, poverty, family violence, substance abuse and bureaucracy have all individually or collectively played a part in the families coming to the marae.

Te Puea Memorial Marae
Address: 1534 Miro Rd, Auckland 2022
Phone: 09 6365683

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Dairying, Housing : More on Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

Irrigation [lincoln.ac.nz]

█ Interpretation of the existing RMA has led to dairy intensification destroying waterways and threatening public health and welfare, in large measure.
A bit of a tour….

### Stuff.co.nz Last updated 14:29, March 23 2016
Canterbury rumbly-gut outbreak linked to dairying
By Pat Deavoll
An outbreak of “rumbly-gut” among communities in Canterbury has Waikato veterinarian and agri-ecology consultant Alison Dewes concerned. She thinks the outbreak is the result of dairy intensification and irrigation contaminating public drinking water. Thirty per cent of the region’s shallow wells have already experienced an increase in nitrogen and pathogen levels after 10-15 years of irrigation on shallow lighter soils, she says. “We have the highest rates of ecoli diseases in the world, and the highest rate of campylobacter, cryptosporidia and giardia in communities in the Hinds region. We have the highest rates of zoonoses (disease spread from animals to humans) in the world in some of the irrigated/dairy catchments like Selwyn and Hinds and the government is promoting a further 40,000ha of irrigation in an already allocated and at risk catchment. Economics and dairy intensification are trumping public health and welfare.”
Read more

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### NZ Herald Online 8:42 AM Wednesday Mar 9, 2016
40pc of farms fail to lodge consents
By Zaryd Wilson – Wanganui Chronicle
Forty per cent of dairy farms required to lodge a resource consent application with Horizons Regional Council have not done so. A total of 229 dairy operations were required to have lodged an application by January 1 this year under the regional council’s One Plan, which aims to limit nitrogen pollution of waterways. The One Plan – adopted by the council in 2014 – limits nitrogen leaching by intensive farm operations, namely dairy, commercial horticulture, cropping and intensive sheep and beef farming. Figures released to the Chronicle under the Official Information Act reveal that only 137 of the 229 dairy operations which came under new rules have lodged consent applications. The new rules took effect on July 1 last year, and farms had six months – up until January 1 – to apply.
Read more

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Wetlands [nzarm.org.nz]

26.11.15 NZH: Resource Management Act reforms to be introduced
The Government will introduce its long awaited Resource Management Act reforms to Parliament next week after securing the support of the Maori Party. The reforms to the country’s main planning document stalled two years ago when National’s support partners refused to back them because of their potential impact on the environment.

Ministry for the Environment

█ About the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015
This page has information on the amendments proposed in 2015 to the Resource Management Act 1991.

█ Resource Legislation Amendment Bill [New Zealand Legislation website]
The Resource Legislation Amendment Bill (the Bill) was introduced to Parliament on 26 November 2015.

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Leading New Zealand law firm Chapman Tripp say:
OPINION Most of the provisions in the Bill have been telegraphed in advance so there is little to surprise. If passed as drafted, it has the capacity to reduce costs and speed up planning processes – but probably only at the margins. For more radical and meaningful change we may have to await the results of the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into urban planning (see Chapman Tripp’s commentary here, dated 2.11.15).

RMA Reform Bill – busy with change but less than National wanted
Chapman Tripp 26 November 2015
OPINION The ‘phase two’ RMA reforms, initially to have been passed in 2014, have now finally been introduced to Parliament as the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. The Bill is a busy piece of legislation running to more than 200 pages, and aims to help streamline planning and consenting processes. But National has had to abandon its proposals to remove the “hierarchy” some saw as enshrined in the existing Part 2 of the RMA, promoting environmental values ahead of economic development in sections six and seven. After the loss of the Northland seat to Winston Peters in March, it does not have the votes to get the wider and more far-reaching changes through. We look at the Bill:
Major changes
● Requiring councils to follow national planning templates (once such templates are available) with standardised provisions across the country.
● A range of measures aimed at producing faster, more flexible planning processes. These include: tighter timelines for plan production and the introduction of two new tracks – a collaborative track and a streamlined track.
● Reduced requirements for consents – allowing councils discretion not to require a resource consent for minor changes, creating a new 10 day fast-track for simple consents and eliminating the need for an RMA consent when consenting is provided for in other legislation.
● Stronger national direction – especially in relation to hot-button issues like providing for new housing or addressing dairy stock in rivers.
Read more

Blue skies review for urban planning – the take-off
Chapman Tripp 15 January 2016
OPINION The blue skies review into urban planning has now left the runway, with the release by the Productivity Commission before Christmas of an issues paper seeking feedback on possible directions for change.

Chris Trotter on National’s “developers’ charter” #RMA reforms

The Never-Ending Suburban Dream: Dr Nick Smith’s purported determination to make housing more affordable by “reforming” the Resource Management Act has been widely derided as little more than a National Party recommitment to the urban development model of the 1950s and 60s. In short, to quote Peter Dunne, “a developers’ charter”.

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### bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz
Friday, 23 January 2015 at 08:53
New Zealand Doesn’t Need A “Developers’ Charter”
By Chris Trotter
THE LAWYERS and the environmental lobbyists are already gnawing at Dr Nick Smith’s proposed changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA). Forewarned by the National-led Government’s first, abortive, foray into environmental law reform back in 2013, a forearmed Opposition has this week re-joined the battle with renewed energy.
The United Future leader, Peter Dunne, has warned against turning the RMA into a “Developers’ Charter” – a potent political riff upon which his parliamentary colleagues have been only-too-happy to extemporise.
Has the Prime Minister, rubbing shoulders with 1 percent of 1 percent of the 1 Percent at Davos, given equal heed to the venerable Member for Ohariu? Given that few politicians’ appreciation of middle-class New Zealanders’ tics and tells is stronger than Mr Dunne’s, if John Key isn’t paying attention to him, then he should – and soon.
Not that, in the brutal numbers game that determines whether a piece of legislation succeeds or fails, Mr Key needs the endorsement of Mr Dunne. The parliamentary arithmetic of environmental law reform requires no complicated figuring. The Act Party’s grace-and-favour MP for Epsom, David Seymour, has already signalled (well in advance of any actual shouts of “Division called for!”) that he will be supplying Dr Smith with the single vote necessary (in addition to National’s 60 votes) to ensure the passage of the Government’s environmental reforms.
Which is, when you think about it, extraordinary. With sixty MPs, National’s current parliamentary caucus is, by historical standards, a large one. It is also slavishly obedient.
[…] It has been a very long time indeed since a National Party politician “crossed the floor” in any kind of procedurally meaningful context. For many years now absolute caucus discipline has not only been assumed – it has prevailed.
Such robotic compliance is not good for the health of National’s caucus; the wider National Party organisation; nor, ultimately, for that of parliamentary democracy itself. Voters need to believe that there are at least some MPs whose definitive allegiance is to values and principles more enduring than the arguments of their Party Whip. On matters crucial to both the social and the natural environments, the practice of representative democracy should rise above the crude calculations of purely partisan arithmetic. It should be about reason and science; about being persuaded by the evidence and securing the greatest good for the greatest number.
Replacing New Zealand’s much admired RMA with a “Developers’ Charter” would be about none of those things.
Read more

█ This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 23 January 2015.

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Related Posts and Comments:
19.1.15 Housing affordability in this country is “just hopeless” –Hugh Pavletich
17.1.15 Ian Athfield dies #architecture
31.12.14 New building laws —happy new year!
9.11.14 Dunedin: Housing upgrade and “rearrangement”
24.10.14 DCC 2GP (district plan): Residential parking + Medium density housing
16.5.14 Dunedin housing
19.3.14 State Housing matters
2.3.14 Dunedin’s social housing need —they built a bastard stadium
12.2.14 DCC: Growth v development contributions
12.6.13 Dunedin housing: building up or Brown-like sprawl #intensification…
30.7.12 National Govt puts champagne and stadium before shelter housing
14.4.12 How perverse is the New Zealand housing market?
8.12.11 interest.co heats NZ housing debate – listen up
13.3.11 Foster on Christchurch rebuild – typical architect… #eqnz
26.12.10 New Zealand housing, a sorry tale

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Images: (top) Hannah Peters/Getty Images AsiaPac – John Key PM and Nick Smith at Hobsonville housing development (August 2014); radiolive.co.nz – Chris Trotter tweaked by whatifdunedin

Dunedin’s social housing need —they built a bastard stadium

Dunedin civic leaders built a ‘bastard stadium’ instead of making the conscious decision to look after our most vulnerable citizens.

The increasing cost of private rental accommodation in Dunedin has seen the demand for social housing rise during the past six months, with Housing New Zealand housing one family a day during that time.

The amount of money people needed just to get in the front door of a private rental was out of reach for many families.
–Nicola Taylor, Anglican Family Support

### ODT Online Sun, 2 Mar 2014
State housing in demand
By Tim Miller – The Star
Unaffordable rental property in Dunedin is driving lower-income families into social housing, with one property manager saying the situation could get worse if rental properties are required to lift their standards.
Increased demand has seen the waiting list of families waiting for one of Dunedin’s 1451 state houses increase to 64.
Read more

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### radionz.co.nz Friday 28 February 2014
Nine to Noon with Kathryn Ryan
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
09:08 Revised statistics reveal true extent of elderly poverty
Roy Reid, president Grey Power New Zealand Federation; and Jonathan Boston, professor of public policy at Victoria University and co-chair of the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty.
Audio | Download: Ogg   MP3 ( 23:33 )

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The Accommodation Supplement available to low income people and beneficiaries has not been raised for NINE YEARS.

This fact, of course, doesn’t and won’t stop upwardly mobile Dunedin landlords (many of them absentee) seeking capital gains and higher rents, while exercising tax avoidance under current legislation —there are insufficient casual, part-time and full-time jobs available in the city to service increasingly high rents (income poverty). With the result Dunedin renters in genuine need are being severely squeezed — this impacts on the health and wellbeing of individuals, couples and families, placing a long-term cost burden on the rest of society. Not surprisingly, the number of homeless people is rising. Meanwhile, the mayor, the council chief executive and friends are skooting off to China on junkets, in the time-honoured tradition of the Old Dunedin CARGO CULT.

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Accommodation Supplement is a weekly payment which helps people with their rent, board or the cost of owning a home.

You may get an Accommodation Supplement if you:
• have accommodation costs
• are aged 16 years or more
• are a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident
• normally live in New Zealand and intend to stay here
• are not paying rent for a Housing New Zealand property.

It also depends on:
• how much you and your spouse or partner earn
• any money or assets you and your spouse or partner have.

How much you will get on the Accommodation Supplement will depend on:
• your income
• your assets
• your accommodation costs
• your family circumstances
• where you live.

For more information go to:
http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/individuals/a-z-benefits/accommodation-supplement.html

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Image: odt.co.nz – State Housing (re-imaged by whatifdunedin)

interest.co heats NZ housing debate – listen up

This is not just about the Accommodation Supplement that 320,000 New Zealanders received last year. Alex Tarrant’s full post prompts a sharp, sometimes shonky blogging debate. It raises critical issues that dog the consultation and drafting of Dunedin’s spatial plan but which never got a look in, and never will. Read the comments.

Our ‘first’ spatial plan should not have been rushed, given the time scale it must address. For ‘rushed’ substitute ‘superheated’, where respect and consideration are much diminished for existing patterns of living (good and bad), underlying and surrounding issues, Southern practices and philosophies, utilisation of natural and people-made resources, regional and global influences, and cumulative effects – and the real economics of PLACE-SHAPING that hinge on the recent actions of a badly-managed, far-from-smart city council that has manufactured a mountain of unsustainable debt.

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### interest.co.nz December 7, 2011 – 04:12pm
Property
Accommodation Supplement: Landlord subsidy punching a big hole in govt books due to unaffordable housing, or an essential benefit?
By Alex Tarrant
The government is being urged to boost the supply of affordable housing to help wean people off a state rent subsidy which could cost NZ$2.2 billion a year – almost twice as much as official predictions – by 2016. But any fix could require a large up-front investment in state house building, and/or require action from the private and community sectors to help increase housing supply, and therefore affordability, at the lower end of the price spectrum.

The Green Party has called on the government to see whether spending on the Accommodation Supplement could be more effectively spent elsewhere, with the party touting construction of more state houses as one solution to problems of housing and rent affordability. Co-leader Meteria Turei has attacked the Accommodation Supplement in Parliament as a subsidy for landlords. Turei told interest.co.nz high house prices, with constrained supply, meant higher rents and therefore costs to the government through the rent subsidy.

Meanwhile, the government’s Productivity Commission, which is currently investigating issues of housing affordability in New Zealand, has had the issue of the Accommodation Supplement, and the possible hit to the government’s books, raised with it by the Salvation Army.
Read more

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One (sample) blogger, right or wrong…

by PhilBest | 08 Dec 11, 11:08am (at Tarrant’s thread)

The fact, observable everywhere in the world where there are urban growth containment policies, is that the escalation of urban land prices under this racket, is always greater than the ability of people to “trade off” space to keep within what they can afford.

The few remaining undistorted markets in the world, have a LOWER median multiple house price AND a far larger average amount of space per person. A one-eighth of an acre section in NZ or Britain, costs literally several times as much as a 1 acre section in many US cities (regardless of pre-or-post-crash conditions. The US cities without urban land rackets had no price bubble).

The result of fringe homes being $150,000 houses on $250,000 sections instead of $150,000 houses on $50,000 sections; is that a decent apartment near the CBD is $1,000,000 (almost all of which represents gold-plated land value) instead of under $200,000 as it is in the undistorted market.

The biggest irony in all this, is that FAR LESS people have the “choice” of living near the CBD, under the “inflated land price” model. Economist Jan Brueckner says in a paper entitled “Urban Growth Boundaries: An Effective Second-Best Remedy For Unpriced Traffic Congestion?”:

“…failure of the Urban Growth Boundary to appreciably raise densities near employment centres is the main reason for its poor performance, and this failure will persist regardless of whether the city has one or many such centres…”

There are numerous other similar academic findings from economists listed HERE: http://www.performanceurbanplanning.org/academics.html

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Otara Simple House

### ODT Online Fri, 22 Oct 2010
Government opens its first ‘simple’ house
The Government has opened its first “simple house” today – its answer to streamlining the design and build process to allow first-time home buyers affordable housing. Building and Construction Maurice Williamson opened the house designed by Stephen Smith and built by Housing New Zealand in the south Auckland suburb of Otara. Mr Smith’s design won the Starter Home Design Competition run by the Department of Building and Housing. NZPA
Read more + Photos

█ s3architects – DBH Starter Home, Preston Rd

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### nzherald.co.nz 5:11 PM Friday Oct 22, 2010
A new era in affordable housing
A spokesperson for housing New Zealand told NZPA the home would cost $1835 per sq metre (including GST) and assumed that the section was ready to build on. NZPA
Link + 2 Photos

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr