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

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
48
1616
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.

…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.

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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

    • But not the bowling greens eh ? And why not ?

      And let me tell you John, we fought very hard in 1987 and 1994, to save the Wellington Town Belt from greedy developers, including the first time, the dastardly Wellington City Council now asphyxiating in political correctness, and if they want to destroy the green lungs of the city, they may well succeed, and I hope that karma smokes the whole damn useless lot of them either in this life, or the next.

  2. 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.

      • Yes, known, dunno if Grant is as passionate about racing tho. Moot point. Could fit heaps of camper vans on Tauranga racecourse, complete with ablutions block and communal kitchens. Handy to the shops and at the right end of town. No doubt similar amenities around the county’s racing industry

    • 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

    • Well the slogan to get her elected was ‘keep moving’, so here we are moving. We just don’t know where too, and neither does she. Her team never had a plan, that is why they shoved her to the front a few years back.

  7. 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.

    • Hey, Unkraut – go stick your stupid head down a dunny. Martyn has a lot more to believe in than you have ever shown on this site.

        • I could be either…them Kraut. Very PC as required these days. Let’s clear the air: Martyn posted the golf course idea a while ago. Back then, I suggested we start by claiming 9 holes initially, not all 18, for development. That is still a LOT of land for houses! Leaves 9 holes for greenspace or golf. That would be a win win with less public resistance and would be much more doable. (All this written from inside the dunny, very cramped!)

  11. 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!

  12. i am looking forward to hearing the screams and howls of people who bought a nice house somewhere to get a bit of space for the children and a bit of privacy for a million + just to see three story slums being erected in haste left right and behind them. Because these will be unaffordable slums. It’s the Kiwi way.

    • Oh Sabine, they are not erecting slums. That was the 1990’s for the international student visa schemes to destroy public education in NZ. Old news.

      The 2020’s are about luxury housing with penthouses and mansions for the 0% tax haven refugees. Any cheap housing is for their future employees, soft marketing sop for photo opportunities, and enabling conditions for future social bonds to address the growing inequality policies they are championing.

      And as for a bit of privacy for a million, not something that can be achieved in Auckland and increasingly as the immigration Ponzi moves outside of Auckland to other towns in NZ, even if you did have a private lifestyle, someone will find you demolish the existing family home, and erect developments to be speculated with (by those in Singapore, OZ and around the world), while the woke, neoliberals, far right libertarians, far left totalitarians and likeminded migrants madly cheers them on.

      It’s NZ’s cultural revolution moment.

      The good news is that the new tax changes and the overseas investor category don’t apply to new builds in many cases so the social and economic engineering can continue . Yipee.

      Keep cheerleading your own demise, pseudo lefties by joining forces with the neoliberals!

  13. Auckland as any other city has huge spaces that could be converted into housing, Carparks.
    The carparks at Silvia Park for example are huge, ditto for St. Lukes etc. But then we can invest in functioning timely easily available public transport that is affordable (non of that is now) to get people out of cars and into public transport, or we can build shitty houses without notification on what used to be single houses suburbs.
    And hey, building shitty townhouses for the masses in the times of a plague, what could go wrong.
    We really don’t care as a country about planning at all, we do fuck all for the longest time – she’ll be riight, and when then she is not right we throw out the cheapest bandages we can to stop the bleed, and when that does not work, we be back at what could have been done, tried very little and now out of things to think of.
    Yei to the squalid slums of south Auckland and West Auckland. Misery and Covid for ever, but architecturally designed and build by a shitty self certified builder who will close shop once the build is finished..

  14. 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!

  15. Reading the plan released by Labour and National for this pretend building program seems to me to not be much of a house building program but instead a test for a new coalition partner for Labour in 2023 maybe?
    The Greens are toxic after their reign of terror with Identity Politics and Wokeism.
    The kids will need to repeat the last 3 years of schooling that they’ve missed out on because of covid and fuckwittedness too. Otherwise they will be the dumbest generation ever!
    With flimsy numbers of builds, somewhere between 48,000 to 100,000 in 8 to another 23 years to me seems like another bs plan pretending that they’re doing something.
    With a global materials shortage, an ongoing qualified labour shortage and a low take-up of willing Capitalists other than developers wanting to cash in. It’s another fail to add to their books.
    So, with the National and Labour coalition first date, it seems as though they ackshully might make a good matching couple, just to keep Act out of the picture.

  16. 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 …

  17. 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.

  18. 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.

  19. …”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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