Seize the Golf Courses! Home ownership crisis requires radical solutions not bipartisan virtue signals

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
48
1622
David Parker's most depressing dinner party ever

Zzzzzzz….

Labour and National unite to help solve housing crisis by forcing councils to build up

Labour and National have united to help solve the housing crisis by forcing councils to build up in urban areas and allow more subdivisions.

In an unprecedented joint press conference on Tuesday, Housing Minister Megan Woods and Environment Minister David Parker were joined by National leader Judith Collins and housing spokesperson Nicola Willis at the Beehive podium.

It concerns the Government’s National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) released in 2020, which is yet to come into effect. It directs councils to make room for growth both ‘up’ and ‘out’ to help solve the housing crisis.

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…great but no where near what the crisis of home ownership now requires.

We require new law cementing in long term tenancies with rent controls and the promotion of ‘ethical landlords’, people who refuse to squeeze every last drop of money out of their tenants for needless greed.

Our social inequality demands solutions. Renters rights, affordable housing and a realisation on behalf of those Generations thrown under the User Pays Bus that agitation is all they have left as hope, is part of that solution.

Use the Public Works Act to seize 90% of all golf courses in Auckland.

The Housing crisis needs an immediate solution, not more empty promises.

Using the Public Works Act, central Government should seize 90% of golf courses in Auckland and build a mix of state houses and first time home buyer owner/occupier tiny houses using the best environmental & urban design housing.

Fuck the golfers.

We could solve homelessness, provide extra resources to these new communities while giving first home buyers an immediate way into the housing market.

Why not turn golfing privilege into economic justice?

 

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48 COMMENTS

  1. Because those sports are accessible to everyone and the grounds used by the public when sports aren’t being played for exercising, walking your dog, kicking a ball with friends. Can you do any of that on a golf course? No. They have no benefit to 99% for people.

    Use your brain John.

    • Agree. It’s a cruel industry. I also like the idea of using golf courses for housing. Golfers could use playstation to play VR golf. For fresh air they could walk or cycle the the publuc areas we can all share. Does that sound realistic? We could harp on but I doubt if it will happen.

  3. Turning rapidly disappearing urban green space into urban sprawl is short term thinking and environmental vandalism.
    Declare all the golf courses a network of urban National Parks. Build high rise apartments on the golf club house/ carpark space.
    We need a 500 year plan to grow urban forests. Golfing could easily disappear but green space is vital for any sort of livable city.

    • How about tiny homes nestled amongst plantations of native trees and shrubs? I think Martyn’s idea needs to be qualified by saying the homes would be truly affordable for people on low incomes, let’s say around $300k.

  4. You had a great meme I recall about Jacinda, ‘The goal is nothing, movement is everything’ or similar.
    She/they do NOT want to fix it. They ONLY want to be seen to try and fix it. And every year they get away with NOT changing things the harder it will be to undo, so they are winning and we are losing as we stupidly, though very politely, sit and wait like gulable naive soles.

  6. Miami Golf Course on the Gold Coast went into housing development as did other golf courses for profit though

    • I agree Tim.
      I watched the Q&A program on immigration where a Wellington academic stated that immigration had indeed created the housing crisis but he wasn’t worried because he could eat lots of different food prepared by the new immigrants. I thought that was ignorant, selfish and racist (not all immigrants are slave cooks for wankers in Wellington).
      We need some data analysis that shows that immigration is bloody good for all of us (poor and infirm included)-taking into account housing costs, healthcare, schooling, jobs, quality of congested traffic life etc
      I suggest immigration must be planned for our benefit and the benefit of the new immigrants when they arrive.

    • Yes I agree the cause of the problem is too many new New Zealanders every year. There is no way to keep up with the immigration numbers. Fix that and then you have a better chance of managing the housing crisis.

  9. Since apartments are rapidly becoming more expensive than the family home but with double the running costs and a sizeable bill within a decade for remedial work, seems to be same old, same old.

    What is becoming more typical in NZ with all the help for the ‘poor and middle class’. Rich absentee mansion owners, giving instructions for new toys such as helipads for their abodes to be consented, which makes life hell for their neighbours who actually live there full time and their full taxes in NZ.

    “A new application has been made to establish yet another helicopter landing pad on Waiheke Island but locals say the existing 48 are more than enough.

    Now, British-based Michelle Bartlett has sought Auckland Council consent for a landing pad at the 5.7ha property she is listed as owning at 345 Gordons Rd between Kauaroa Bay and Kaikuku Bay on a peninsula looking across to Maraetai.”

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/waiheke-island-helicopter-landing-pad-application-locals-urge-rejection/QBPUEOKZI2LPBMXLMLH7UH2LWM/

    So after decades of decreased regulation for the super wealthy in NZ, where money buys zoning plan changes, any item anybody can think of to be added to their home such as helipads, as much pollution as possible (air, land, noise, water, toxins) for those that can buy their way with advisors well aware of the considerable loopholes while the effects to their less well off neighbours are considered ‘minor’.

    There needs to be more regulation for these types of requests which should be banned in most areas because Kiwis are nowdeemed extras in Black Hawk Down with the amount of cumulative helicopter movements around Auckland).

    Meanwhile just to be ‘kind’ make those that require helicopters live in one area only, such as around airports that already have that noise!

  10. Doesn’t matter how much land you have if you don’t have the materials or the labor – houses don’t get built. And if the cost of materials increase then houses either get built shabbily or for an increased price.

    • Luckily the rich can still afford to build and design their McMansions without the hassle of resource consent and hoard the existing materials and cheap labour force so that smaller players paying for real skills, go out of business, creating a monopoly situation that we see, so often in NZ being championed by paid lobbyists and lazy government taking them up. Supermarkets, banks, industry, Construction materials…

      Think of the exciting consultation with Maori about the Te Reo rebranding, talk tanks, and more marketing budget to sell the schemes!

  11. And the race courses. And the Auckland Domain. And the Wynyard Quarter. And Albert Park. And Cornwall Park. And Onepoto Domain. And build hundreds of house boats for the Waitemata Harbour. And …

  12. Do an audit to see who actually get the most use and the best grounds and park use it will show a pattern of privilege for the rich and elite sports.

  13. Remuera Golf Course covers 60ha. A lot of prime land. It’s worth over $1 billion.
    So you would expect a lease of around 50 million p.a. which I am sure the hacks could afford in annual club fees.
    I am not sure what the annual lease is now, but before it was renegotiated recently the club was paying Auckland City, who owns the land, 11,000 per year.
    That would be a good starting point for some intensive accommodation even allowing for setting aside green space.

  14. …”Fuck the golfers”…

    Yup.

    …”We could solve homelessness, provide extra resources to these new communities while giving first home buyers an immediate way into the housing market. Why not turn golfing privilege into economic justice?”…

    Says it all.

    • All well and good but many first home owners who are on NZ wages can’t afford to buy into Remuera golf course land – much of the so called first home buyers are new migrants who bring the money with them.

      This is not a judgement but a reality of what the average NZ wage, buys.

      That is one of the many reasons why Kiwibuild was never going to work to solve local poverty. People’s wages are just too low to be home owners now – even if the land is free, the labour is exploited and so forth. NZ construction industry is broken and now essentially pretends to build things and the money is being siphoned off.

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