Liz Davies: The housing crisis - how we got here and what to do

The lack of suitable, affordable housing is a complex issue. Photo / File

COMMENT

Hard to believe now but in 2008 and 2009 efforts were beginning to raise awareness of a housing affordability problem in Tauranga and the Western Bay to the powers that be.

This was as part of the newly formed SmartGrowth Housing Affordability Forum.

In 2009 there were no men's and women's homeless shelters, no emergency and transitional housing and no groups providing meals and other necessities to homeless people and whānau. The growing housing crisis has resulted in the establishment of a range of new organisations and growing pressure on existing organisations as more and more people struggle to find housing and/or afford housing, which is then having the flow-on effect of people struggling to buy food and pay bills.

Over the next 10 years, beneficiaries, low income earners and whānau resorted to living on the streets or cars, living in garages, sharing houses with other whānau or living in shacks.

Hidden homelessness has been with us for a long time - mainly affecting people with mental illness and/or addiction issues - but locals became increasingly aware of the issue as it became more visible and more people, including employed people were being increasingly affected.

How did we get here in 10 short years?

Fast forward to 2020. I don't think many people would dispute that lack of affordable housing is, if not the number one issue, closely behind traffic congestion. The national backdrop to this is a broken housing market, which has been decades in the making, so is likely to take decades to solve.

Developing on the outer edges of Tauranga incurs significant ongoing costs for households to commute. Photo / File

Lots of good people have been working for many years, attending innumerable meetings, writing innumerable reports, trying to address the lack of suitable, affordable housing - yet the problem continues to worsen and exasperation increases.

How have we got to this point? A large part of the issue is that it is complex - so many factors and players contribute to a lack of affordable, suitable housing.

They include:

• Population growth pushing up demand for houses, increasing house prices and rents, lack of sufficient, affordable housing, due in part to low levels of intensification.

• Lack of profit/incentives to build smaller, good quality, affordable homes – just over half of the population are one- to two-person households and only 10 per cent of our housing stock is one or two bedrooms.

• Tauranga lags far behind the rest of Aotearoa in terms of social housing, 2.5 per cent of housing stock in Tauranga is social housing, compared to 4.5 per cent nationally, which equates to 1700 houses we don't have - still far short of the ideal levels of 7 to 8 per cent needed nationally. This has been exacerbated by no new social houses being built from 2009 to 2017 and a reluctance to consider different housing typologies, including tiny homes.

• Relatively low household incomes, in comparison to the national median household income.

• A misperception, particularly in Wellington, that Tauranga is prosperous so does not need as much central government support as other parts of Aotearoa.

This contrasts with the often-quoted, simplistic answer that more land will solve the affordable housing crisis. The logic being, with more land, more houses can be built and, according to demand and supply market forces, this would drive down the prices of houses, thus becoming more affordable.

No one would disagree more suitable, affordable housing is required. However, it's not as simple as providing more land. This ignores the huge cost involved in supplying necessary infrastructure for new houses - roading, wastewater, schools etc, which is largely the responsibility of councils, which have limited means to generate revenue for such infrastructure.

It also ignores that new developments are generally found on the outer edges of Tauranga, which incurs significant ongoing costs for households to commute to work, shops and more. We also lose valuable rural land and necessary food bowl.

What to do?

• Increased central government support including funding for the shortfall in social housing.

• Free up Crown and council-owned land for housing and public amenity.

• Support community housing providers to be able to access capital.

• Provide incentives for new initiatives such as progressive home ownership, rent to buy and institutional investment in large scale affordable housing portfolios.

• Require developers to contribute to or build affordable housing - inclusionary zoning and encourage smaller dwellings.

• Enable alternative housing types, including tiny homes and greater use of prefabrication.

• Ensure the building code requires homes to be healthy and warm.

• Increase security of tenure for those who rent such as institutional investment into rental properties.

• Redirect the millions being spent on emergency/transitional housing to building houses.

• Ensure community wellbeing is prioritised in new supply programmes.

• Ensure sufficient resourcing of social services to support people experiencing housing stress.

- Liz Davies is the general manager of SociaLink, an umbrella organisation for Western Bay of Plenty social agencies.