Housing Minister Nick Smith yesterday said a part of the kiwi dream was slipping away for Auckland families trying to save for a house deposit and seeing prices going up by $50,000 or $60,000 a year.
Mr Campbell said Auckland business could not afford a delay of three years for the unitary plan to come into effect.
"The costs to Auckland new home owners and ratepayers will be unnecessarily inflated.
"The costs will result from Auckland Council having to manage seven different consent processes under the city's seven former legacy councils.
"This is simply too much to ask. It will add a significant cost to the building of new homes just when we need them to be cheaper,''said Mr Campbell.
He was speaking ahead of a meeting tonight between Dr Smith and Mayor Len Brown to discuss the issue of land supply and housing affordability.
Earlier this month, Dr Smith vowed to break the "stranglehold that the existing legal metropolitan urban limit has on land supply'' - a policy he said was "killing the
dreams of Aucklanders'' by driving up house prices.
He said the council's plan to contain 60 to 70 per cent of new housing within the current
built-up area would fail due to "community angst over intensification''.
Mr Brown hit back, saying Dr Smith was advocating a flawed Los Angeles model of
"suburban sprawl and unbridled land availability''.
Dr Smith appeared to take a more conciliatory approach when he appeared on TV One's Q+A programme on Sunday ahead of last night's meeting.
"Me and Len are in the same paddock,'' said Dr Smith, who acknowledged that along with land supply, the costs of infrastructure, building materials, labour and compliance costs
were critical to making homes more affordable.
