NZ faces its biggest housing crisis in recent history – property developer

He advises the government to adopt a two-pronged strategy

NZ faces its biggest housing crisis in recent history – property developer

Sir Paul Adams, a property developer and philanthropist at Bay of Plenty, believes that New Zealand is currently facing its most significant residential and housing crisis in recent history – blaming the government.

Adams pointed out that the successive governments had failed to address crucial property issues – resulting in sky-high land and property prices, shortage of social housing, drop in home ownership, and homelessness.

“Money being spent by the government on motels and other temporary accommodation for those on the growing waiting list for social housing would be better directed into subsidies for social housing providers to help fund new social housing,” Adams explained.

He mostly blamed the Resource Management Act for the housing crisis as it “stops sensible progress.”

“The RMA and everything associated with it like the Environment Court, consultants, and councils have become, by default, an anti-development group that has cost this country billions of dollars in development progress, hence the housing shortfall today,” he said. “If sufficient land had been allowed to be rezoned residential since the inception of the RMA, there would not only be a sufficient supply of land to meet today's shortfall, but there could well be enough rezoned land for future development.”

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Adams advised the government to adopt a two-pronged strategy to address the housing crisis: speed up the process of rezoning land for residential development to solve the lack of homes and provide funding for trunk infrastructure.

“Councils use the debt cap as a reason for delaying rezoning. [However], if the government funds it, then it can recover these loans by way of development contributions, which are secured debt. This, in turn, creates windfall GST to the government of about $100,000 for every house and section that gets built,” he explained. “By speeding up the delivery of creating 100,000 new houses, it will be a win for all, including government, which will be the recipient of many billions of dollars of GST.”

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