Auckland residents alarmed by plan for 3000 new homes

Chris Carter

Residents of some of Auckland's eastern suburbs are alarmed that 3000 new homes could be packed on to Housing New Zealand land in their midst.

In a speech to the Real Estate Institute, Housing Minister Chris Carter yesterday confirmed Tamaki, Mangere and Otara were in the Government's sights for "eliminating" social problems by changing the socio-economic make-up and renewing environments with mixes of state-owned and private homes.

He said Housing New Zealand owned about half of the 5000 or so residences in Tamaki, which includes Glen Innes and Pt England, but it could reduce that concentration by building, with private developers, 3000 more homes for mixed-use accommodation.

As few as 600 of these might be state houses, leaving the rest as properties for first-home buyers, modest-income families and charitable organisations, and 1000 for the open market.

"You could, over time, reduce the concentration of state housing in Tamaki to 39 per cent and enhance affordable housing supply in the area," Mr Carter said. "I think in this period of housing unaffordability we have to be creative."

Officials have yet to conduct similar modelling in Mangere and Otara, and a spokesman for the minister said no proposal for redeveloping state-housing areas had been presented to the Cabinet.

Housing NZ is concentrating on the mixed-use greenfield development of 3000 homes at Hobsonville, and has bought 25ha of former Defence Force land in Papakura for up to 450 houses.

An agency spokeswoman had few details of Mr Carter's plan, but indicated Housing NZ was waiting for a decision in a fortnight on an Auckland City Council plan change application to allow more apartments, terraced housing and townhouses in Glen Innes.

Auckland Housing Lobby spokeswoman and Glen Innes state-house resident Sue Henry said Housing NZ had shown little regard for the wishes of a long-established community with its initial experiments with in-fill housing.

"We do not want our area turned into an overcrowded ghetto," she said.

She also said her organisation was firmly opposed to allowing private developers on to Housing NZ land.

Ms Henry criticised Auckland's regional growth strategy for inflating property prices by "jamming in" people to established suburbs, and called instead for a national resettlement strategy to spread the load among other cities.

Glen Innes Action Group spokesman Paul Clapshaw said Housing NZ was already cramming houses into the suburb, and 3000 more homes, in addition to a similar number being developed by the private owners of the old Mt Wellington quarry, would put an intolerable burden on local roads.

But Tamaki Community Board chairwoman Kate Sutton acknowledged that her area still had available space and was pleased the minister was considering mixed-use development.