Rt Hon John Key
Prime Minister
Improving housing supply and affordability is important for New Zealand families and communities, and the National-led Government has a comprehensive housing plan to tackle the issue.
It’s a challenge we are facing head on and our plan is delivering results. We’re now in the middle of the biggest building boom New Zealand has ever seen. There are 40 houses being built every working day in Auckland – four times the number when we were elected.
We’re on track to build 85,000 new houses in this term of Parliament – that’s nearly twice the number of existing houses in all of Dunedin. But we need to press on.
Recently I announced the next step in our plan – a $1 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund to speed up housing development in the high-demand areas where it’s needed most, like Auckland. This new one-off contestable fund will focus squarely on financing the roading, water and other important infrastructure needed to support new housing.
Modern infrastructure is essential to support our growing economy into the future. The Productivity Commission and Councils have already pointed to the cost of infrastructure as one of the issues preventing new houses from being built.
I also announced we are considering setting up Urban Development Authorities for specific areas of high housing need. They will have streamlined powers to override barriers to large scale development and have proved successful in many other countries. We’ll have more to say on this later this year.
We’ve created 154 special housing areas in Auckland to speed up the development of an estimated 63,000 homes. We’re freeing up Crown land for housing development in Auckland and we’re redeveloping Housing New Zealand properties to build around 2,000 new dwellings over the next two years.
Another $100 million was announced in Budget 2016 to develop housing on surplus Crown land in Auckland. Four Auckland sites with the capacity for 940 homes have already been bought with the $52.2 million allocated to the programme in Budget 2015.
We’re also reforming the Resource Management Act to make it easier for developers and councils to get houses consented and built. To keep up the momentum, Councils will be required to ensure land supply for housing keeps pace with population and economic growth under the National Policy Statement on Urban Development we’ve released.
On the demand side, last year we tightened the rules to ensure people buying and selling property for profit pay their fair share of tax. There are no quick fixes to this issue, but National’s comprehensive housing plan is delivering results and we are committed to building on this momentum.
