COMMENT: From time to time I read articles that suggest we should be taking a more centrally-planned approach to housing, one that spans not just years, but decades, and takes into account future housing needs in a way that balances supply, changing demographics and cost.
In such a utopia we would supply as many houses as we needed when we needed them, we would cater to the needs of the homeless and the disadvantaged, and we would do all of this at an affordable cost that ensured that houses were something to live in rather than something to profit from.
Proponents of such an approach argue that, while such a high level of control may not be popular in the short to medium term, it would pay dividends in the long term.
This argument brings to mind the Old Testament story of Noah’s Ark – surely the ultimate example of long-term housing planning. Whether you take the biblical story literally or simply regard it as an interesting metaphor, the story is equally instructive. Noah built his future home (the ark) over decades, to the jeers and derision of his neighbours who couldn’t see the point in such long-term planning, only to be proved correct when the torrential rains came, and the ark provided safe refuge for his family at precisely the time that it was needed.
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However, critics of long-term planning decry the dangers of centralised control arguing that, even with the best will in the world, a centralised authority would inevitably become a bloated bureaucracy and that it is impossible to pick trends even a few years in advance, far less over decades.
So, who’s right? And do we even have enough information to draw an informed conclusion?
We do.
Firstly, it’s important to understand that a form of centralised control has been in place in our towns and cities for over 150 years. All local authorities have some sort of future planning process, which determines where housing is likely to be needed, along with enabling bylaws and a plan for the provision of the necessary infrastructure. This mechanism doesn’t always get it right, and certainly doesn’t always work as well as we might hope, but, in general terms, our urban landscape is a testament to the future planning of previous local politicians and council bureaucrats.
Ashley Church: “If we had centrally planned our housing needs on the basis of what was predicted in the 1990s, we’d be in all sorts of bother now.” Photo / Ted Baghurst
In more recent years we’ve seen the emergence of an urban development authority in the form of Kāinga Ora. The idea of such an authority goes back to the time of Nick Smith when he was Housing Minister in the last National Government. Smith originally planned four such authorities, however, the incoming Labour Government, in its now predictable zeal for centralised control, decided to narrow this down to just one and to absorb several previous housing bodies (most notably, Housing New Zealand) into this one urban authority.
So, has it worked?
In fairness, it’s too early to tell, and it should also be noted that Kāinga Ora hasn’t yet flexed the full extent of its enabling legislation to become the all-powerful, all devouring, beast that it could, instead, choosing to largely focus its attention on specific developments and locations. What we do know is that the cost of Kāinga Ora has already ballooned and that there are fears that it may need a significant bail-out from the taxpayer over the next few years.
But more importantly than this, we know from history that even relatively short-term predictions about housing needs in our towns and cities have invariably proven to be hopelessly wrong. The impact of natural disasters, wars, population growth policies, technology, changing tastes, social changes and changing construction methods all mean that our housing landscape today is vastly different to what our forebears were expecting and planning for just a few decades ago and if we had centrally planned our housing needs on the basis of what was predicted in, say, the 1990s, we’d be in all sorts of bother now.
Ultimately, how we approach housing planning comes down to what we’re hoping to achieve. If our objective is to balance the expected needs of our communities with enough flexibility to allow the private sector to adapt to changes, then we’ve had that system for decades and – while it’s not perfect – it has served us reasonably well.
If our objective is to control the cost and style of housing, any mechanism intended to achieve this will ultimately end up in total failure as international and experiential evidence teaches us that this can’t be done in a sustainable way for more than a handful of years.
All eyes are on what Kāinga Ora attempts to do next.
- Ashley Church is a property commentator for OneRoof.co.nz and a real estate business owner. Email him at [email protected]
