The terrible housing recommendations in Wellington

Joel MacManus at The Spinoff writes:

To start, the panel considered two very tricky questions: would making it easier to build more houses lead to more houses being built? And would an increase in housing supply help improve housing affordability? 

It might seem like a simple question for anyone who learned about supply and demand in NCEA level one economics, or even a toddler who has grasped the basic concepts of cause and effect. Not so much for the Independent Hearings Panel: “We agree that enabling intensification does not, of itself, improve or even address affordability.”

Astonishing – they think supply doesn’t impact price.

One of the biggest battlefields in the War for Wellington is around the Johnsonville rail line, a 10km route between Wellington city centre and the northern suburbs of Johnsonville, Ngaio and Khandallah. 

The areas around train stations are some of the best places to build apartments, because people don’t need cars in order to get to work in the city; they can just walk down to their stop. That’s why the NPS-UD required councils to upzone to six storeys within walking distance of any “mass rapid transit station”. 

In fact, the Ministry for the Environment’s own guide, written to help councils implement NPS-UD, explicitly states: “Examples of existing rapid transit stops include train stations on the commuter rail services in Wellington.” 

But don’t worry: the independent hearings panel managed to wriggle its way out. The panel “put little weight on the MfE guidance document”. In a piece of Suits-level legal analysis, it discovered: “It does not say all rail stops qualify.” There’s also no rule saying a dog can’t play basketball.

The law is clearly designed to include area around train stations, which is sensible.

One of the most important decisions of the entire District Plan is the central city walking catchment. Anywhere close enough to town for people to walk to work should be zoned to allow six-storey apartments. But “walkable” is a very subjective term, and once again the panel was determined to allow as little new housing as possible. 

Kāinga Ora argued it should be a 20-minute walk. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development wanted a minimum of 15 minutes, ideally more. Waka Kotahi pushed for the walking catchment to be a minimum 1.5km from the edge of the centre city zone. 

During the hearings, Waka Kotahi provided census data showing that vast numbers of Wellingtonians walk to work, even from suburbs as far as Newtown (which is not that far). The panel rejected that census data with a truly spellbinding feat of argumentative trickery: the census had only asked how people get to work. It didn’t ask how they got home. 

“We can readily believe that people might walk a reasonable distance to work, because that is generally downhill. That did not tell us, however, how they get home (back up the hill from which they have come). We do not consider that an area can be considered within a walkable catchment if people have to rely on other modes of transport to travel in one direction.”

The Panel looks ridiculous as it tries to argue the sky is not blue because sometimes it is cloudy.