Housing Affordability Crisis

Wow! This is a hot topic in Australia and NZ at the moment. The news cycles are dominated with government and private sector debacles on housing output, affordability, builders’ bankruptcies and rental dramas.

The cost of living is biting hard, and the blame game is in full swing.

The latest culprits are migrants and international students. Both NZ and Australia are introducing measures to curfew immigration as apparently international students are buying property left right and centre!?

There are also the builders going bust due to escalating construction materials. We can also continue to blame the boomer generation, negative gearing and, of course, the government. What a mess we are living in now!

Out of all the above, I think government and red tape has a lot to answer for. Zooming in on Local government, lack of progressive thinking and lack of appetite for mass producing social housing is probably part of the equation.

I will offer my perspective, and I am throwing my hat in the ring with a new culprit. Yes, you Town Planners you got us here! Lol.

No seriously, red tape and approval delays on local councils is at an all-time high. Developers need to manage their return-on-investment timelines and with longer and longer wait times for approvals, their holding costs escalation becomes like the proverbial snowball.

There are anecdotes about weeks and weeks of debates between architects and council officials about shades of colours on high rise projects, about deep planting, architectural merit and so on.

Town planners have become focused on challenging architects’ building aesthetics, fa?ade activation and street scape features. Yes, of course we all want great outcomes for our cities, but who is controlling the decision making of local government on colour and superficial items like screening and planting (all important but not critical on a crisis)?

My thesis is this - building a home is not that expensive. Especially if Off-Site Manufacturing is developed, as well as smart ways to mass produce buildings.

The real issue is land. We have lots of land but not much available in major cities. The thing is, we no longer need to live in major cities. Since the pandemic, we can efficiently work remotely. Some of us prefer regional/country living with both NZ and Australia offering an amazing plethora of regional alternatives to the major capital cities. What we do need is to be connected, both physically and virtually.

So, my recommendation to planners and government officials is this. Go back to what you do best. Stop worrying about policing colour and form, and start thinking about connecting and developing infrastructure to reach regional areas. What happened to the fast train options? Implementing satellite internet, etc? Why don’t urban and town planners investigate transportation and development of regional areas?

With greater connectivity and infrastructure development we can open a vast amount of land at low cost. This paired with mass production of homes will represent a viable and smart way forward to the housing crisis.