John Dare's calculations suggest these new rules will increase the price of affordable terrace/row housing by over 20%.
John Dare's calculations suggest these new rules will increase the price of affordable terrace/row housing by over 20%.
Opinion by John Dare
THREE KEY FACTS
Auckland Council is considering Plan Change 79 to the Auckland Unitary Plan under the Resource Management Act 1991.
The plan aims to manage impacts of development on Auckland’s transport network, with a focus on accessible car parking, loading and heavy vehicle management and catering for EV charging and cycle parking.
It also seeks to ensure pedestrian access and safety are prioritised within private accessways in medium- and high-density residential zones.
John Dare is an engineer and town planner who has built over 10,000 dwellings as a director or senior executive.
OPINION
The NZ Herald reported Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown saying, “You can’t bluff me” to the infrastructure industry and criticising the Government for spending and money-wasting (href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-rude-ridiculous-and-sometimes-hes-right-simon-wilson/UU363O2BOJGUJGFSTSWGKBNHI4/" target="_blank">September 3).
The irony is that his own council, thanks to Auckland Transport advice, is quietly pushing ahead with a plan change that will make much-needed terrace housing unaffordable and create even more regulation and cost.
Around half of the houses built in Auckland will be affected by this rule - that’s 10,000 homes per year.
What is the rule? It’s Plan Change 79, which will have significant cost impact and result in a less dense city. A site that could take more than three dwellings now requires separate footpaths, wider driveways, bike sheds and delivery car parks.
I’m an engineer and planner with 50 years’ experience and my calculations suggest these new rules will increase the price of affordable terrace/row housing by over 20%. Rear sections will become unviable to develop because of these new driveway and pavement rules.
The rule of thumb for a redevelopment to be financially viable is that three new houses are required to replace an existing house.
These rules will result in decreased affordable housing supply in built-up areas and cause greater urban sprawl. It will require, wait for it, bike sheds for every attached house with no garage. Where has Mayor Brown seen this idea? It certainly isn’t in Angers. Even pensioner housing will require bike sheds.
The Plan Change requires delivery parks in shared driveways with more than 10 houses and separate pavements, but this is unlikely to stop children being killed in shared-driveway accidents.
This isn’t future-proofing. Ask most EV owners, they are quite happy charging overnight on their trickle-charge home plug. If AT and Auckland Council have their way, this rule will require the equivalent of NZ’s largest electric power generation station to be built, just in case a tenant in affordable terrace housing has an EV and doesn’t want to use a fast-charging public station.
John Dare says the Plan Change 79 rules will result in decreased affordable housing supply in built-up areas and cause greater urban sprawl. Photo / Michael Craig
So what’s the problem that they’re looking to solve?
If in the case of “required access lighting” it was to make common driveways safer to walk in late at night, the proposed rule is so complex and potentially costly it won’t succeed. There are many more durable and less complex ways of lighting driveways (even using the torch on a phone).
The new rules around common driveways, which have been 3.5 metres for over 60 years, haven’t been thought through. Common driveways serve pedestrians and cars.
I’ve lived down a shared driveway with four houses for over 40 years, driveways create a sense of community. The new rule assumes that such co-operation and courtesy is unsafe and causes accidents.
The new plan requires a raised footpath 1.4 metres wide (wider than many suburban footpaths) and a separate driveway where there are four to 19 cars sharing it. This will reduce the number of dwellings that can be redeveloped on most existing front sections by 25%.
No fact-based analysis is given by Auckland Council to support its claims that better safety will occur by raised footpaths and wider driveways.
The costs and impacts of the wider-driveway rule are ultimately borne by the whole of society, as the lower densities on land with existing infrastructure means population growth and housing is managed through urban sprawl.
Adding all these extras will likely result in one less dwelling per site. This will add very little benefit for renters and home owners and significantly will make the house sale price and rent more expensive.
Plan Change 79 could also add hundreds of millions of unnecessary cost to Kāinga Ora’s social housing budget.
Come on Mayor Brown, please get your officers and Auckland Transport to look more closely at the unintended consequences.
