As Housing Minister I’d like to take a few moments to comment on some of the points and assertions raised in this article, not the least with the headline, which obviously misrepresents National’s intentions with the release of its Gateway Housing product later this year.

My comments are in bold below, and I would invite interested readers to read National’s suite of housing policies by visiting: http://national.org.nz/PolicyAreas.aspx?S=178

You say National’s Gateway Housing policy “assumes first home buyers will trust the government to keep land at a reasonable cost and not withdraw it before the 10 years is up, despite any changes in government over that decade.”

The value of the land and interest charges would be agreed in a contract – the terms could not be altered or withdrawn as long as the tenant/owner met the conditions of the contract. It is a lease in perpetuity, broken only by the resident if they opt to buy the land.

You say: “Mr Heatley could not confirm where the pockets of land will be located, aside from saying that Auckland’s first dole-out of land will be in Hobsonville. Nor could he confirm the average price or size of a section of land. A myriad of problems with this idea spring to mind. For example, how will the new Hobsonville residents travel to work in other parts of Auckland?”

I’m not sure why you suggest they’d have any more difficulty travelling to work than anyone else in any other part of Auckland – or any other part of the country, for that matter.

You then ask: “How will local councils fund the parks and public facilities that will be needed when these new developments take place?”

There’s a master plan and comprehensive development plan at the Hobsonville Land Company website – www.hobsonvilleland.co.nz – (a subsidiary of Housing NZ Corporation). Local authorities, including Waitakere City Council, are involved in infrastructure for the community – which will be a mixed community – including schools, shops, water, bus routes etc.

You write: “Property developers are not keen on the idea of suburbs purposefully packed full of low-income earners.”

If you take Hobsonville as an example, it won’t be – many of the Hobsonville houses are coastal and will probably, depending on the health of the property market, be close to $1 million each. In fact Hobsonville is quite possibly the sort of mixed community the property developers quoted in subsequent paragraphs promote.

You say “Prominent Auckland developer Jamie Peters is building a town of his own up in Gulf Harbour on the remaining land that banks let him keep. All going to plan, 1000 homes of varying costs (apartments, free-standing houses) will surround a town centre when he’s done with the project 15 years from now.”

Hobsonville will have a town centre – see the aformentioned website – and other areas where Gateway Housing sections will be sold will be in existing communities, with town centres. Placing lots of people in houses in areas with no critical infrastructure simply won’t happen.

“At the end of the day we’ve got a rising population of four million, and we’ve got to house everybody,” Mr Peters says. “Some people can afford expensive architecturally designed homes, but we do have an obligation to those who can’t.”

This is exactly what we’re doing by providing cheap land for first home buyers in places like Hobsonville alongside million dollar homes, in the same suburb, with the affluent living alongside the less well off.

“Mr Peters doesn’t think that relocating the poor to city outskirts will benefit society.”

Who mentioned city outskirts? While the Gateway Housing product is still under development, it’s fair to say it will most certainly not be offering opportunities to build on and buy land in only “city outskirts.”

This is followed by: “You need to have [a wide range] of people throughout a community. I don’t think having the wealthy in one area and the poor in another is a good thing.”

I’ve already made the point that under Gateway that won’t be happening.

You write: “Developer Rick Martin, responsible for Auckland’s Takapuna Sentinel apartment building, is strongly opposed to National’s decision to release Crown-owned land to low income citizens. “I am very concerned about the National government’s knee-jerk reaction to start releasing residential land for affordable homes. They will have to be very careful with that as it could create social conditions that don’t work when you put one economic demographic in one area,” Mr Martin says. “You have to mix people up.”

Again, I’m not sure where the idea that we were going to be sanctioning off large groups of people from one another came from, but it wasn’t us and it won’t be happening.

You write: “Bringing on a sudden oversupply of land to Auckland’s choked housing market will have “a huge effect”, Mr Martin says. “I don’t think that the price of land is only driven by a shortage, but also by compliance details so they need to look at the compliance costs. The cost of construction is also a huge barrier,” says Mr Martin.

This is why National is reforming the RMA and the Building Act.

And then: “The type of housing that struggling Kiwis will be able to afford to build causes concern to developers. Who will build them? Will they be architecturally sound, aesthetically attractive?”

The Gateway product is still being developed but rest assured building soundness and quality will be addressed – we’re not going to stand behind the development of sub-standard buildings out of keeping with their surroundings.

Then: “I think that with that type of housing, it is very difficult to maintain a good quality standard of living,” Mr Peters says. “[National has] to think hard about how to design subdivisions and houses that maintain high standard and good value.”

Rest assured; we will.

“Mr Martin says that rushed affordable housing has already created enough headaches in New Zealand’s property market, such as the leaky building issues.”

Mr Martin might be better casting aspersions on his property developer colleagues who built all those leaky houses, rather than suggesting Gateway will deliver the same thing.

“Mr Peters says he doesn’t know of any country that has got the puzzle of affordable housing right. “In Europe, especially London, they make developers provide a percentage of development to low cost housing, such as apartments, which are hard to integrate.”

This is the reason National opposed the Housing Affordability: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008, which it announced last week it would be reviewing. See press release which makes Mr Peters’ comment redundant to the article: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/affordable+housing+enabling+territorial+authorities+act+2008+be+reviewed

You write: “What else can National do to help struggling Kiwis break in to the property market? “Well, with KiwiSaver we offer a $5000 grant toward the deposit on a first home,” Mr Heatley says. The average deposit on a home in Auckland is $86,600. Anyway, many New Zealanders in National’s target market for this scheme can’t afford KiwiSaver while they are paying off student loans. Are there any other grants in the pipeline? “No,” Mr Heatley succinctly informs NBR."

Yes, but it it’s pretty well understood that in many cases the cost of land is twice that of the cost of a dwelling on the land, which is why, if we can identify land that has infrastructure in place, the mortgage necessary for the house to go on it will be far more easy for a young family to get finance for than if the land was included in the package. After 10 years they can then raise a mortgage for the purchase of the land.

Gateway is only part of National’s suite of efforts to address housing issues. We acknowledge there is no silver bullet but are putting in place:
• Gateway Housing
• Efforts to keep interest rates at reasonable levels
• Greater take home pay through tax cuts
• RMA reforms
• Building Act reforms
• And the Housing Innovation Fund – which has had its funding increased to $20 million a year

Finally: “Mr Peters says he doesn’t think there is any easy answer. “One thing I do know, is that we have got to provide affordable housing somehow.” That much is true. Let’s hope National will think its affordable housing plan through with a little more long term detail before launching the scheme.”

No representation was made that National’s Gateway Housing product was being launched in the next couple of weeks; it is some months away, by which time such criticism might well be warranted if we’re shown to be light on detail. Many points in the article were valid; some have been addressed, as I’ve pointed out above – and perhaps you weren’t aware of that – while others will be addressed. Certainly it’s my view that the assertion in the headline is both incorrect and unfair.
Thank you,
Phil Heatley
Minister of Housing

..this kind of public interaction with a cabinet minister is what's great about NZ. Hope you keep it up!

Simon, if we stopped Immigrants from buying houses, who will build the mass fo accomodation to put them into? You want more State housing built for them? More tower blocks of shabby, pokey, flats in the inner cities?
More important, who will all the flood of Kiwis leaving the country, sell their homes to?
The reality is that NZ only survives because enough immigrants want to come here and those people fill the void left by Kiwis leaving permanently.
House prices were being driven up more by investors adding to their stock of rental houses. Encouraged by a tax structure that allows them to lower their overall tax liability by doing so. Remove that one simple detail and the pressure would have come off house prices.

When I said full-tax I was referring to if he exited, obviously. :)

No ghettos, no hand outs, also, stop letting pomes in the country with the pound, surely we are no longer a colony.

Nationalist Phil

Thank you Minister,
Not only does that ease my (admittedly somewhat cyncical) mind, but I am very encouraged by your willingness to engage in these forums. I hope your colleagues are taking notice.
Many thanks and much kudos,
PB.

Gulf Harbour has a high record of leaky homes - Oyster Cove (also now known as "mositure cove")built by Rick Martin has had to be completely re-done at enormous cost not only to the owners but to owners of property in GH. The whole area has been tainted by the development sell offs by Jamie Peters' company Starline and allowing subdivisions within GH to be almost ghetto-like and not what people thought they were buying. Vision Gulf Harbour was formed to try and protect any further damage. The orignal vision was what people bought into and sadly the place now looks terrible with half started developments that stopped long before this recession. We know because we used to live there. Even in a booming housing market homes took many months to sell and growth was way below the rest of the Auckland area and any other part of New Zealand. Whatever National is doing it cannot be as bad as these two developers. Ask the residents how their properties have been affected. We have not been the only ones to suffer.

Aucklands proposed second Airport at Whenuapi is going to need a pool of cheap labour to draw from, Hobsonville and the surrounding area is a relatively affluent community whose locals will have no wish to become baggage handlers or food service workers, where better to house these low wage workers than in the new Ghetto of west harbour, the last time Auckland created such a suburb was when the Mangere Aiport was being planned, until then the established suburbs of south Auckland were Otahuhu, Papatoetoe, and the then small enclave of Mangere which for the most part was a well to do suburb surrounding Kings College and Middlemore hospital. When the Airport went in, the farmland between these Suburbs was infilled with endless cheap three bedroom boxes to house the growing labour needs of the new airport. If its enivitable that West Harbour goes the same way as Mangere it will be crucial that the lessons learnt in the south are applied wisely in the west.

Hello everybody!
Thanks for your site existing,
it is very nice!
For most people its a very positive experience.
Thanks!
My own online pharmacy =) Here’s a clue:

viagara
viagra
vigra
vagra
sale online