Highly productive agricultural land is being eaten up by urban sprawl. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Highly productive agricultural land is being eaten up by urban sprawl. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
OPINION:
A home isn't just four walls; it is somewhere warm, and it keeps out the winter draught and stops us from getting sick.
A home should be a place of security and affordability, where we lay down foundations, and have a place to raise our tamariki, and become partof a community.
We've been in the midst of a housing crisis for the past decade that has been set by successive governments.
This crisis is occurring because there has been more investment in investors rather than our people and communities. This crisis covers all regions whether urban or rural, it is affecting all New Zealanders.
The Environment Ministry and Stats NZ recently released Our Land 2021 - a look at land use and the state of the environment in recent decades. The report describes how highly productive agricultural land is being eaten up by urban sprawl.
Only about 15 per cent of land is flat, with good soil and climate that makes it ideal for food production, needing less irrigation and fertilisers.
The Government has promised new rules to protect the land where our food grows through a National Policy Statement on Highly Productive Soils, but work seems to have stalled.
New properties are often built in sprawling suburbs without good access to public transport and a long way from where people work and study.
We are known to be one of the least affordable places in the world for someone to buy a home. It has meant more vulnerable New Zealanders have been pushed into tenuously renting homes that are often cold, damp, unsafe and inaccessible.
New planning rules need to create liveable communities.
Our Government is currently working to replace the RMA with new laws, and this presents a chance to build up our communities so they're truly thriving.
New rules must restrict urban sprawl into the countryside where our food is grown, and encourage more new homes close to where people work and study. RMA reform should put the needs of people and nature first, not profit-driven developers.
• Teanau Tuiono is a Green list MP based in Palmerston North.
