Saying yes to more homes and development

Saying yes to more homes and development

For far too many people, Wellington simply isn’t an affordable place to live. Rents are too high, working people can’t dream of owning their own home, and at the sharp end we see a growing homelessness crisis on our streets. Lack of affordable housing also makes it hard for businesses to attract and retain staff, which acts as a handbrake on our city’s economy.

Affordable housing and new development are crucial to making Wellington an affordable, vibrant city where people want to live and businesses thrive. To turn this around, Wellington needs more homes and a culture
of ‘yes’ in the Council that backs development, along with investment in social housing and apartment conversions.

To get there, myself, Andrew Little and other Labour councillors will:

1) Accelerate housing development by speeding up consents

2) Create an urban development office similar to Auckland’s Eke Panuku to deliver more housing and more vibrant communities

3) Continue affordable apartment conversions in the CBD and investment in upgrading our social housing to give more families warm, healthy, safe homes

The
problem

A culture of ‘yes’ for new building consents

Labour and Andrew Little will:

• Give the Chief Executive new KPIs to bring down times to process building and resource consents.

• Assist complex consent applications by adopting a project partner approach:
  - Consent applications will have a dedicated project staffer who will be a proactive partner to support larger residential and mixed use developments in our town and city centres through the process. They will be involved early on to discuss the process, initial feasibility and constraints, and components of successful applications.
  - They will ensure Council proactively provides all the necessary compliance information required and expected timelines to ensure a consistent process as well as early resolution of any issues that arise.
  - The aim is to be proactive and remove unnecessary barriers to consents being approved in a timely manner. This will take lessons from the Auckland Qualified Partner approach.

• Review additional requirements given to developments within the District Plan (e.g. lighting and landscaping requirements) with the aim of reducing unnecessary red tape.

• Comprehensively review consenting fees to align with other major metropolitan centres.

Council partnering to deliver vibrant communities

Labour and Andrew Little will:

• Set up an Urban Development Office (UDO) similar to Auckland’s Eke Panuku to support developers and coordinate residential development alongside transport, public realm and community facility upgrades
  - The UDO would help coordinate planned council infrastructure and community amenity investments to enable good development and minimise disruption. It will have the power to leverage council land holdings to support private investment and maximise every dollar spent. It will explore how we can best use funding and financing tools alongside private developers to tackle our infrastructure deficit and build more homes. The UDO would be funded within existing baselines and internal reorganisation of existing staff.

• Encourage more housing by leveraging Council landholdings in suburban centres.
  - For upcoming WCC-led developments (for example the Tawa Anchor Project), partnering with private developers could mean an existing single-story community facility becomes a multi-story building with an upgraded library and community centre, commercial activity and new residential apartments. Council would maintain ownership of the land and community assets.

Looking at all options to go for growth

Labour and Andrew Little will:

• Investigate new tools to incentivise growth in good locations.
  - This should include options for a new development levy regime to encourage high density housing development in the CBD and alongside key public transport corridors, Land Value Rating and/or other tools that encourage the most efficient use of land and attract good development into Wellington’s urban and suburban centres.

Protect Wellington’s social housing stock

Labour and Andrew Little will:
 

• Start delivering the HUP2 upgrades to social housing stock to ensure tenants have warm, dry and secure homes.

• Advocate to central government to expand the Income Related Rent Subsidy (IRRS) and other tools to ensure Wellington’s social housing portfolio is financially sustainable for the long-term.

• Commit to no reduction in social housing places provided by WCC and Te Toi Mahana.

Deepen partnerships to convert more vacant offices into affordable rentals

Labour and Andrew Little will:

• Continue the Te Kāinga programme, which targets 1500 conversions of former office buildings into affordable rentals in the CBD by 2033.

Other commitments

Labour and Andrew Little will:

• Support the establishment of the national Ratepayers Assistance Scheme which leverages cheap borrowing to reduce upfront housing costs. This will be done by allowing development contributions to be financed at below market interest rates and spread across multiple year repayments.

• Instruct Metro Water to prioritise water investments in key residential development areas to ensure Wellington is ready for future development.

• Advocate for central government to urgently fund more social housing places in Wellington and provide more Housing First support.

• Work closely with the Government on earthquake-prone building reform to ease the burden on Wellington and strike the right balance between safety and cost, noting the volume of earthquake-prone buildings is unsustainable for both council and Wellingtonians. This would be a priority in a regional deal.

Wellington City Council has issued new dwelling consents at a lower rate than other councils in recent times, driven by factors including density limits, overuse of heritage protection rules, and an anti-development culture.

This has contributed to a housing crunch that made housing unaffordable and has forced families to move out of the city into wider Wellington, other parts of the country, or overseas.

In the last term, the Council has made good progress in addressing some of the factors that have constrained new house building, in particular changes to the District Plan to allow more housing.

But there is more work to do. Consent numbers are still too low given the challenge Wellington faces. This is partly due to the wider economic issues facing the city, but also because developments have been held back by a lack of engagement from council and roadblocks to consents being issued.

Builders report that the consents process is needlessly complicated and slowed by double handling, inconsistency and unclear rules. Now the worst constraints in the District Plan are eased, the rest of the system needs to line up to enable more good homes. It is time for a culture of ‘yes’ to new housing and new development in Wellington, and get more consents issued.

This does not mean rubber-stamping any and every project. It is about having a positive attitude towards new development and finding solutions to enable projects that are going to lead to a more affordable, more vibrant, more livable city.

Successful cities have kickstarted urban regeneration through working with central government, mana whenua, and the private sector.

For example, Eke Panuku in Auckland has been leading urban regeneration programmes across 18 suburbs to deliver more homes and better town centres.

They’ve achieved this through using a mix of strategic planning, leveraging planned infrastructure upgrades, and private capital.

We need to learn the lessons from Eke Panuku and create a one-stop-shop that can consistently deliver great community spaces and housing in Wellington.

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Authorised by Benjamin Patrick McNulty

ben@mcnulty.nz