South Auckland politicians give mixed reviews on government's new zoning rules

New zoning laws are set to bring more homes to a street near you.

But as a number of South Auckland politicians point out, whether that will have a positive impact on their communities remains to be seen.

New Zealand is in a housing crisis driven by a chronic shortage in affordable homes, so with Labour and National coming together to promise an easing of zoning laws, what's not to like?

A lot, according to Manurewa Local Board chair Joseph Allen.

He said the government's proposed Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill would do more harm than good.

"Everyone wants to have affordable housing. But is this the right way to do it? No. This is being put through by stealth and there's nothing we can do."

Allen, who has lived his entire 52 years in the suburb, said it was building costs that were driving house prices, not supply issues.

He was seeing about 20 new resource consents being approved every week thanks to the Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP).

"Sometimes it's as high as 80 consents, so the intensification is already happening at a pretty alarming rate".

Despite declining homeownership rates in Manurewa, he believed the negative impacts on areas like Hill Park, which had many historical and architecturally significant homes, outweighed the potential benefits of this legislation.

"When people are coming to New Zealand and they stop-over in Auckland, they might have a drive around Ponsonby or stop in Hill Park to look at our character areas, but all that protection is going. Groups in Hill Park worked really hard to keep the special character overlay here, and so the government needs to respect that."

He also expects backyard privacy will be lost through this legislation. "For someone who's built a deck in their backyard and wants to relax in private," he said, "one metre from their neighbour's boundary, a new house can be 11 metres high so all your sun will be lost".

In response to his concerns, Housing Minister Megan Woods said the government was not removing protections on historic homes and trees, but was instead requiring councils to provide "more extensive and detailed analysis to determine special character".

"They can't just apply a blanket approach across whole suburbs," she said.

"Fixing Auckland's housing crisis is about building more houses. Yes, the AUP and the mixed housing urban zone resulted in some more homes being built, but one of the biggest problems with it is that it didn't incentivise enough volume."

She said analysis work done by the Auckland Council chief economist unit, backed up by PWC and Sense Partners, showed the AUP consistently enabled development in poorly connected, less desirable areas.

"Where the AUP did result in more houses being built, it mainly enabled development that was far from the city centre and in less accessible areas. This is not good enough. Increased urban sprawl and clogged up roads aren't something we want for Auckland's future."

Given much of Māngere, Ōtāhuhu, Ōtara and Manurewa are already zoned mixed housing urban, Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board chair Apulu Reece Autagavaia said the legislation "levels the playing field" by ensuring his district was not the primary focus for developers wanting to build infill housing.

"Having all these special character areas [in central Auckland] has actually forced outer areas to intensify, even though they have less quality infrastructure and less public transport access, whereas isthmus has all the best infrastructure, more jobs and better public transport."

While he generally supported the new law, he was concerned it was "driven by quantity over taking a holistic view of planning our neighbourhoods".

He pointed out that the removal of minimum car parking requirements would "see developers building car parking in nicer areas, but in places like Ōtara they will just cram as many units in as possible".

"It can't just be dictated by the market and who can afford what. So we'd like to see more detail around that."

For Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board chair Lemauga Lydia Sosene, anything that improved the chances for her constituents to buy a home was a good thing.

"First home buyers have become so disheartened and it's probably worse now with houses in our area going for over a million [dollars]. We're generally supportive of the intent of this bill but we've also got some concerns."

To balance the negative impacts of the new laws, Allen, Autagavaia and Sosene want to see central government invest more money into areas like South Auckland to match the increased demands intensification will bring.

"We can't be left carrying the can for all the new infrastructure," Allen said.

Sosene said a recent town centre upgrade project in Ōtāhuhu had to be scaled back because it cost over $5 million to fix the area's ageing pipes. She said it was an example of how "we have really suffered in the south" and she hoped an injection of central government cash could rebalance things.

"Our people deserve good services, good facilities and public amenities but it's a struggle for council coming out of our fourth lockdown and we've had to have some really hard conversations around our revenue, so we would support more resources for our communities."

The minister pointed out that extra infrastructure requirements had been signalled for some time, "so any extra costs should already have been well anticipated by councils".

"We also can't shy away from the reality that council planning decisions have failed to keep up with the amount of infrastructure investment needed to fix failing or ageing infrastructure, and to provide new infrastructure to cater for population growth, and address climate change."

She also highlighted the government's recent $282 million boost to fund infrastructure in Auckland to enable up to 1260 additional homes.

"We're investing more than any government has done since the 1970s on earthworks, pipes and roads to speed up the pace and scale of building homes all over the country, but central and local government have to share the responsibility."

Submissions on the bill closed on Tuesday and it is expected to be passed into law on 16 December, with the changes taking effect in August 2022.

Local Democracy Reporting is a public interest news service supported by RNZ, the News Publishers' Association and NZ On Air.