Opinion: David Chaston is taken aback by the shallowness of the Auckland mayor's position on affordable housing in his city. He thinks the Council is misguidedly targeting 'affordability for the wealthy'

Len Brown's response is definitely shallow...we have major supply issues in Auckland...and he says "people are building flat out and buying flat out" 

Spooky, innit possums, that the steep drop in consents completed coincides wiv the introduction of the General Competency provisions of Sandra Lees 2002 LG Act amendment.  Allow for the lag as the penny drops.  As an outsider/insider to all of this (worked on the big data cubes needed to run 10-year Plans in detail for a few smaller LG's) I know exactly the thinking that went on.

An imagined dialogue between an Eager Young Councillor and a Grizzled Old CFO:

EYC:  Whee!  we can spend ratepayers munny on anything we want!  Especially Social and Cultural Well-beings which cover every human activity under the Sun!

CFO:  Hang on, young Councillor, yer technically right.  But them RatePayers are gonna worry about those bills before long.

EYC: OoooKay.  So who Else can we stick with the tab, that won't appear on their Rates Bill, Oh Wise CFO?

CFO: Well, there's always Fees, Charges, Levies and Contributions!   And insider Joke here, young 'un - them Contributions are Compulsory!

EYC:  Who pays for all these - I mean, are they People as gonna Vote me Out?

CFO:  Why, no!  They are few if well connected, tend to extravagant lifestyles, being as how they are landowbers, developers, business types, builders, and bankers.  They may Bitch and Moan but there aren't enough of them to sway things, if you play it Right.

EYC:  You mean, they're Greedy, Profiteering Stereotypes who are Easy Prey for a few public mis-characterisations?

CFO:  I couldn't possibly comment.

Allow a coupla years lag fer all this to sink in, take hold, and get going, and I reckon we have a pretty good correlation here.

T'would be interesting to get hold of a time series of aforesaid Fees, Charges, Levies and Contributions and see just how it all - er - Developed, DC.

Amazing that after the debate we've had here for the last few years, we still get articles like this.

It's no more Len Brown's fault that anyone else's.

Much of the cost of rules, was as a direct result of folk seeing their 'asset' as something other than a structure which decays with time. They wanted to think it was permanent.

Then there's the wee problem of oil - $30 a barrel to $110 a berrel in 10 years. There's not one part of a house or it's servicing, isn't made of or delivered by the stuff. Anything indirect is related to it too - a lawyers fee will reflect the cost of the Beamer and the fuel for it.

Then there's the sequential 'every development is further away/costlier than the last', given that we cherry-pick the closest/cheapest first. It can't possibly deliver 'cheaper' housing.

Then there's the little matter of incomes: half the equation. They repay mortgages, they pay rents. They just happen to depend on oil too, or they don't exist (takes some getting your head around, but there you are). So they can't possibly keep pace - why is it folk can't (don't want to?) see this?

There is no such thing as "have" and "have not"

everybody have something, so there cannot be any "have not" especially in auckland.

Therefore everybody should be able to afford "$500,000" houses. and if they can't it's their fault.......This is Len Brown's philosophy. He only point out to "amount" of available land for building, but cleverly ignore how much they will cost to built on it .

Wonder how David Shearer can overcome this "intellectual" disconnect when he comes into power (if ever ) and try to fulfill his $300,000 houses pledge in Auckland ? Len Brown and He are both from Labour ......or is Len Brown actually giving David Shearer a big stick to beat National with this coming election by his own inaction ??

Call Mayor Brown the same names that Ivan called you , David ....

...... at least in Len's case , that description would be accurate .

Ain’t the English language great, it's always changing and adapting, or being high jacked for ulterior motives. Awful now means terrible instead of full of awe, gay now means homosexual instead of happy and affordable now means a $300,000 70m2 two bedroom townhouse on 250m2 on the fringe of Auckland instead a free standing three bedroom house on 600m2+.  I think the word affordable, in a housing context, needs to be reclaimed.

If you look at the cost of land, development, levies, consents etc. and strip out the waste, then affordability is definitely more towards the 3x medium income end that its present position. If we did this then your $300,000 would get you a property far closer into the city than at present, or if you did build high density on the fringe as they are suggesting, then you would get the same type of property far cheaper. This should not be an arguement about high/low density. It should be about removing non value adding components (waste) from the system.

Before the merge of Auckland (super) Council, Manukau, Waitakere,  and some extent Northshore had built up a massive amount of land as part of their land bank approach.  Why can't  they sell them at cost for housing development? 

After all Len loves the limelight and has the habbit of spending other people money - rates payers paid for those land!  He might even earn a knighthood if he plays his cards right!

It's in the interests of councillors and politicians to keep supply of homes down, especially those aged 55 plus thinking about retirement as they are mostly property or multiple property owners and see the retirement fund coming from those properties - the higher the prices go the better. Even Labour pollies are heavily invested in property!

They simply do not give a toss about affordability. So vested interests in the political arena will keep supply down and the land bankers will sit on their properties as they watch the prices soar.

That graph above tells the story - consents for new homes pitiful and likely to remain that way for many years in Auckland as existing house prices soar in what looks like being the strongest house price surge we have ever seen.

An LVR restriction would only assist the rich to get richer as they already have the equity to acquire much more and then the rents rise further.

Excellent article thanks David. Great to see Len Brown called out with the facts. He says there's 15,000 sections ready to build. Reality - these only a few thousand. 

What about in coming years? What is going to be the flow of new sections ready to build on - and numbers of new houses needed to accomodate Auckland population growth? 

I think if this major is lying, or mistaken about the current situation today; he probably hasn't got a clue or hasn't planned for ongoing needs i.e. ongoing, and growing, crisis.

You're doing a great job exposing this David. I wish the other media and central government  politicians would also all call him out. 

David You are attacking the wrong person.  There is only so much that Auckland Council can do, and what you expect of Auckland Council and Len Brown is well beyond what they can do.  

Unless you produce evidence (not rumour from anonymous sources) to the contrary, there are at least 15,000 sections ready to go in so far as the Council has done its form filling.  Shifting those section to the next stage of building on them is not the responsibility of or within the power of the Auckland Council.  The Council has to react to applications, not make them.  If it has not issued many building permits compared with previous years it is becasue it hasn't received the applications, not because it has got squadrillions of applications on hold.

True the Council also has a planning and infrastructure role.  If you read the Auckland Plan you will see that it is planning for more houses, it does have a coherent plan.  It is trying to develop the supporting infrastructre, inlcuding the all-important public transport, notwithstanding the obstacles and money wasting (e.g. the holiday highway) of central government.

Instead of pouring vitriol on Len Brown, why not take aim at those who can do something i.e. central government who can: build state houses, set up first home loan schemes (like the Greens propose), change tax and other laws to discourage land banking, assist with funding of public transport and other infrastructure, and so on.

John Key's response to date has been a pathetic do nothing "leave it to the market" response.  There is a much stronger case for ripping into that thinking than there is ripping into Len Brown, at least if you put personal aminmosity to one side.

Finally, if new houses are being built for the well off, does that not mean that the houses those people currently live in will be freed up for others to move into, and so on, so that new home buyers can move into exisitng houses.  Or is there some iron clad rule that requires all first home buyers to move into new houses?