Two-storey units on Bunkys Way, Glen Innes. Photo / Tamaki Regeneration Company
Two-storey units on Bunkys Way, Glen Innes. Photo / Tamaki Regeneration Company
High hopes were held for the Crown/Auckland Council-owned Tāmaki Regeneration programme when it took over state housing in one of the city’s poorer areas.
It was due to deliver “10,500 new, warm and dry public, affordable and market homes” when it was launched in 2014.
“Three suburbs - one brightfuture” is the Tāmaki Regeneration Company’s catch-cry of the 10 to 15-year programme launched under John Key’s National government 10 years ago.
The development is a mix of state houses, shared ownership (where the buyer takes a mortgage for a third or more of the value of a home, then acquires the balance from TRC when they can afford it), built-to-rent units and third-party affordable houses.
But after a decade in Glen Innes, Point England and Panmure, only a tenth or 1250 of those 10,500 new homes have been built, according to the Tāmaki Regeneration Company’s latest annual report - progress Housing Minister Chris Bishop has expressed dissatisfaction with.
If the current pace continues, it will take precisely a century to deliver what’s planned.
Protesters marched through Glen Innes last decade over the state housing redevelopment scheme. Photo / Dean Purcell
Extremely slow progress - hit lately by floods, labour shortages and building material price rises - means that ‘bright future’ appears to be taking much longer to arrive.
Chief executive Shelley Katae acknowledged tardiness: “We have, in our own view, not progressed as far or fast as we need to, to meet our aspirations for delivery”.
“I am unhappy with the slow progress in Tāmaki,” Bishop said.
“The Labour government never believed in the model and never backed it, essentially replicating the old Kāinga Ora model of development when Tāmaki Regeneration Company was purposely designed to be different. I look forward to sitting down with the TRC Board in due course to discuss what is required to speed up development.”
Housing Minister Chris Bishop plans to discuss the slow progress with the business. Photo / Marty Melville
The annual report showed the past year has been so tough that only 26 new public homes were built in the entire 12 months, short of the target 38 and only one target build rate was met out of a number.
The company’s annual report acknowledged the decade-long progress: “We have delivered close to 1250 homes through the programme since FY14”.
In the face of this, it remains optimistic: “We are increasing the pace and scale of the housing programme”.
Back in 2015: Bill English, then Minister for Finance and Dr Nick Smith, Minister for Building and Housing at the opening of new homes in Taniwha St, Glen Innes as part of the Tamaki Regeneration project. Photo / Jason Oxenham
The report for the year to June 30, 2023 also acknowledged the huge gap between the dream and the reality: “The regeneration programme plans to deliver 10,500 new, warm, dry public, affordable and market homes for Tāmaki whānau”.
In the year to June, 2023, the company delivered only 26 public homes (short of the target 38 homes), nine shared equity homes (the target was 13) in a programme managed by Kāinga Ora, 18 built-to-rent units (the target was met) and 75 third-party affordable houses (short of the 188-home target).
The annual report said the company is chaired by Evan Davies, a former SkyCity Entertainment Group chief executive who worked for Todd Property for many years. Directors are Kerry Hitchcock, Madhaven Raman, Rangimarie Hunia, Leo Foliaki, Pat Snedden, Susan Macken and Diana Puketapu.
Eight meetings were held in the year, of which Hunia attended one of two after her appointment last May and Davies attended all.
The report said why things were so tough.
“Across the motu, the environment for housing delivery has been challenging with supply chain disruptions, shortages of building material and rising construction costs driven by inflation,” it said.
“In our current pipeline, we have lodged or are due to lodge resource consent for projects that will deliver 300 new homes over the next four years,” it said.
The company is 59 per cent owned by the Crown and 41 per cent by the council.
Auckland’s housing market downturn hit accounts hard. Revaluation gains of $643 million on freehold land in the June 30, 2022 year turned to devaluations or losses of $422,615 in the 2023 year.
Nick Smith at the Tamaki Regeneration announcement, Marist Rugby Club, Panmure, April 30, 2015. Photo / Jason Oxenham
The company’s aim via intensification is to replace 2500 old state homes in the three suburbs with 3500 new state homes and 7000 affordable and market homes, drawing protests from critics who saw it as a privatisation of the Crown’s estate and objected to people being told to leave homes they had been in for years.
Work began in earnest in 2016, after a 2015 announcement that Housing New Zealand would hand over ownership and tenancy responsibilities for state homes in the area to the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company. Then-Finance Minister Bill English said the scheme would encourage regeneration.
The company would build 7500 new houses in place of the 2500 existing ones in the next 10 to 15 years. More than half of the new houses would be sold and the remainder would be retained as social housing, English said then.
“Change has been slow to come to Tāmaki but we are determined for the next decade in Tāmaki to look very different to the decade past,” then-Housing Minister Nick Smith said in the April 30, 2015 statement on the ambitious programme.
But questions arose within just a year of the company beginning work.
In 2017, the Herald reported questions about the slow progress in an article headlined Will Tamaki Regeneration meet its target 7500 builds in 15 years? The late Penny Bright’s Official Information Act inquiry found that only 77 former state houses had been demolished since March 2016 with two others relocated in November 2016 - all for redevelopment purposes.
Of the 213 built, as of August 2017, more than half were to be sold on the private market. Ninety-two were new social houses, 39 were “affordable” homes and 82 new private market houses, the late activist told the Herald then.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
