The Cabinet Housing paper
Chris Bishop has released a paper on Housing he took to Cabinet. Some key extracts:
- My goal is to flood urban housing markets for Tier 1 and 2 Councils with land for development. Abundant zoned and serviced land within and at the edge of our cities for housing will moderate land prices and increase competition among land-owners to stop land banking
- Pricing should play a greater role in infrastructure funding. Growth bottlenecks have emerged precisely where prices do not reflect costs. Infrastructure should earn sufficient lifetime revenue from service charges to recover its whole-of-life costs.
- Communities are more likely to support housing growth if they share in its benefits. Under existing funding rules, water and roads infrastructure in developments may be partly funded by existing ratepayers. This acts as a disincentive for Councils to approve new subdivisions. I intend to report back on options to improve Council incentives for growth, including potentially sharing a portion of the GST from developments with Councils.
- Land protection can dramatically lower infrastructure costs by purchasing options to buy land years before developments begin. For example, a recent study by the Infrastructure Commission found land for the North-South Opaheke Arterial in Auckland would cost $78 million if purchased today, but would cost an estimated $1 billion if purchased immediately before the start of the development.
Looks like a great work programme.