Looking ahead, over the next 30 years Kāpiti is projected to increase its population by 32,000 with a requirement to develop 14,000 new dwellings.
Last month, council launched its public consultation on our draft growth strategy. This was in response to the Government's National Policy Statement on Urban Development, an enabling legislation for the intensification of residential development. It includes development of six storeys or more around transport hubs and commercial centre.
Under this legislation councils are required to notify plan changes to their respective District Plans by August 2022. While in the midst of our consultation process on our growth strategy the Government dropped a game-changer. Under the Medium Density Residential Standard one can build three houses of up to three storeys on most sites without resource consent.
Within the current planning regimes of most councils you can only build one home of up to two storeys. The Amendment Bill to land this change to the NPSUD is expected by the end of this year.
The fact that this game-changing step was jointly announced by both the Labour Government ministers and the opposition National Party leaders speaks volumes about the housing crisis facing the country.
The rapid supply of more housing by cutting red tape and unleashing market forces is a step few can dispute given the lack of supply and skyrocketing house prices and rental prices. And the overcrowding and health problems that go with this. The new standards will come into force immediately the NPSUD plan changes are notified in August 2022.
One of the reasons the Government has moved in this direction is that the current consenting process under the RMA allows for the right of neighbours to object to the development of increased density and building heights.
This NIMBYism has been a problem especially in urban centres like Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. With a stroke of the planning pen the Government has exterminated this right of objection to give developers certainty and reduce development costs.
While I understand the Government's move to add another solution to the housing crisis, from a local government's perspective, it comes at a cost. We have to bear the cost of upgrading or providing new supporting infrastructure unanticipated under our current long term plans.
With the removal of the resource consent process councils will lose their ability to anticipate future development trends as developers go straight into building consent applications. For Kāpiti, the Government move also blows apart the spatial planning we have invested in over recent decades.
Our current District Plan has about nine precincts. The Garden Precinct along Waikanae's Te Moana Rd embeds low residential densities with high amenity values. Pekary Precinct in Peka Peka and Waikanae's Ferndale Precinct have structure plans to preserve and protect high character and amenity values. Then you have our Beach Residential Zones along Ōtaki Beach, Raumati Beach and Paekākāriki where their low-key bach character is protected.
I would have thought that people who had bought properties in these areas knowing the protection given by the current District Plan should have rights under this 'contract' to enjoy the amenity values they had invested in good faith. But it appears they won't under the impending new change to the legislation.
These are some of the hooks we are discovering as we explore the potential impacts of the change. There are bound to be others.
Jack Stephens, Boston Main and the 160 other final-year kids will go on to college next year. We can only hope that by the time they enter the workforce they can still live in Kāpiti and have access to owning their own homes and secure this without compromising the high amenity values Kāpiti is known for. But as one former Prime Minister noted recently, hope is not a strategy.
