Surprise, surprise…
Govt’s plan to build houses on excess crown land hits another roadblock
The Government’s plan to build houses on excess crown land has hit another roadblock. Three sites earmarked for housing can’t actually be built on.
Building and Construction Minister Nick Smith showed off spare Government land during a bus tour in 2015 as sites he wanted to put houses on.
Fast forward a couple of years, and there’s a problem.
His officials have deemed the Wiri Station Rd site in Auckland “not viable for residential development”.
The minister was too busy to talk to us on Tuesday so he left the explaining to the Prime Minister, who told Newshub: “There’s been a lot of bumps, some speed bumps but some just trying to get the thing up and going.”
One of those speed bumps was revelations that the Government didn’t actually own the land – most of it belonged to the Council.
Mr Smith pushed ahead, adamant they’d build anyway – but it’s not going to happen.
Labour leader Andrew Little said it’s been a shambles.
“There’s been so many stuff ups, cock ups, muck ups, I’m not sure the guy’s got any shame left.”
Mr Smith issued a statement to Newshub saying that out of all the land he showed off on his 2015 bus tour, this block at Wiri was the only one that wasn’t going ahead. The statement listed four developments that are going ahead – with a total of 476 homes.
The Auckland sites currently being developed through the Crown Land Programme are:
Moire Road, Massey, 196 dwellings
Great North Road, Waterview, 120 dwellings
New North Road, Mt Albert, 100 dwellings
Titoki Street, Te Atatu, 60 dwellingsBut on top of not being able to build on Wiri Station Rd, Manukau Station Rd will have 100 fewer homes than planned, Mihini Rd hasn’t been vacated by KiwiRail so it can’t be used and Luke St has already been snatched for a pop up temporary housing site.
“This is now standard operating procedure for Nick Smith, to tell everybody that there’s a big plan and it turns out no homework has been done,” Mr Little says.
…Folks, I appreciate that it’s difficult to admit that you’ve been duped, but you have been. National have zero, let me say that again, ZERO, interest in fixing the Housing Crisis.
Sure, National care about looking like that are doing something, but it’s all smoke and mirrors.
The property bubble that National have been inflating with the open flood gates approach to immigration that is seeing 70 000 a year pouring in on top of the 250 000 student/worker visas (many of whom are being exploited once they arrive here) is what is driving the Housing Crisis and National will never crack down on that because they need the property bubble to keep NZs inflated GDP rates up.
Nick Smith wandering around like a lost infant on sites where he can’t build a thing sums up the intellectual dishonesty of National’s position. They cling to power because the middle classes who have traditionally challenged the Government on inequality and poverty are as silent as mice now they’re all property speculating paper millionaires.
By irresponsibly inflating a property bubble that they now can’t afford to damage, National  have caught a tiger by the tail that they can’t find any way of letting go without it mauling them.
Meanwhile entire generations of NZers are being locked out of home ownership.
No Martyn, I haven’t been duped.
When people -traditional moderates and socialists- were saying to me that that they were going to vote National because they couldn’t stand any more of Helen Clark, I did suggest that would be a very bad choice and that there were better option. And it was a very bad choice.
But never forget that the bulk of the populace are totally uninformed and haven’t got a clue what they are voting for. So we end up with a kind of mob rule.
As for the housing crisis, it can never be ‘solved’ because it is a symptom of industrial living and the stampede to NZ that we knew would come (forecast in 2002) as the rest of the world rapidly turned to shit.
Just wait till things start turning really nasty in Australia (it’s coming): then you’ll see a crisis.
these dicks have had 8 long years plenty of time to magic up the houses
your right having blown up a dangerous property and debt bubble there is no exit plan only the sound of bubbles popping
We may have to face a very unpleasant fact; that ultimately, the Housing Crisis cannot be fixed without closing the Immigration floodgates.
We love our immigrants, but there is no question, immigration is the direct, root cause of our constant housing pressures.
We can tinker around the edges, trying to fix supply, but to do that, we have to change the entire system, and that isn’t going to happen.
Turn off the immigration firehose however, and the crisis goes away. Prices fall, rents fall, unemployment goes down, wages go up, housing affordability improves, and home ownership rates increase. Ultimately, an entire nation of Middle Class workers learns to give up on the dream of a rentier lifestyle, and finds better uses for their KiwiSaver money. The Middle Class can finally turn its attention back to alleviating poverty, which is its historic role.
All this from reducing immigration. But immigration has been turned into a Sacred Cow. We on the Left have been conditioned to trigger and foam at the mouth every time it’s mentioned. But there is nothing racist about reducing immigration, as long as it is done equitably and without discrimination, and with respect for those who have already established themselves here in good faith.
The bottom line is, nobody has a sacred right to come to NZ, and we are not obligated to keep immigration levels at record highs, year on year. If the price of allowing a quarter of a million new long term visitors and immigrants into the country every year is creeping poverty for the majority, insane wealth for a few, and a Lost Generation of Kiwi youth unable to afford a home, the price is too high.
“We love our immigrants, but there is no question, immigration is the direct, root cause of our constant housing pressures.”
You are absolutely right, it is a major cause of the housing affordability crisis, next to speculation by multiple property owners based in NZ, and by some overseas based buyers, some of them using locals as a front for buying up housing stock.
Wherever I look for immigrants, they tend to either work in the lowly paid jobs, the jobs that are perceived as unpleasant, dirty and underpaid, or on the other hand they work in the very complex jobs, where high level skills and qualifications are essential.
It seems that many Kiwis are comfortable by having a newly created servant class catering for them at restaurants, supermarkets and in many service jobs, and also comfortable with letting the really too difficult work get done by the high end experts.
In between is the majority of Kiwis, living it as they see fit, but betrayed are the many working poor and those unable to work for whatever reason, and we see, that Maori and Pasifika are over represented in that category, as they were mostly never given a fair start in life.
When do Kiwis realise they need to learn to do things themselves, or with the people already here, which requires educating and training all capable people to their abilities and potential, which again requires some resources in education, free education, I would say.
As most only care about their own wallet and nest, they do not want to front up to that responsibility, and rather let employers get endless numbers of immigrants do the job.
So the population grows, and one day resources will get scarce, that is when they all start complaining, when it hits them.
Housing is just one are where this is now showing.
Comments are closed.