Finance Minister Bill English
Recent indications from Finance Minister Bill English that the government would be increasing its house building programme have been made official.
English, and Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett, have announced that Housing New Zealand lodged 60 resource consent applications in the last quarter.
If these consents are approved, it will pave the way for Housing New Zealand to build 1297 new houses in Auckland which could accommodate more than 3200 people in 20 suburbs.
English said the majority of the $440 million worth of developments are allowed for under the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act legislation.
Alongside the various Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas, the Auckland Unitary Plan provides for around 30,000 new houses on Housing New Zealand land, he said.
“As we’ve been signalling for some time, the government has a comprehensive housing programme that will deliver housing supply at scale to the Auckland market.
“Housing New Zealand is in a sound financial position and is gearing up to deliver large scale redevelopments across the city.”
The redevelopments would be similar to a much-publicised Housing New Zealand redevelopment in Northcote where about 300 existing houses will be redeveloped into about 1200.
In that development the Housing New Zealand homes will increase from 300 to 400, while a further 600-800 properties will be sold as a mix of affordable and market housing.
This model is set to be employed in other redevelopments.
Bennett said that while the majority of the newly consented houses will be retained by Housing New Zealand, a proportion will not be.
The government has more properties coming on-stream all the time, big and small developments, and this is being ramped up, she said.
“We’ll have more Housing New Zealand homes but, equally, we’ll be opening up more affordable and market housing.”
The announcement follows speculation last week that Housing New Zealand was in financial dire straits.
This was prompted by a Treasury paper which showed Housing New Zealand was due to run out of cash for development and maintenance by February 2017.
However, English has dismissed this, saying the Treasury projection was because Housing New Zealand was ramping up its building programme from 300 new houses a year to between 1000 and 2000.
English said he could give “complete reassurance” the government will fund the costs for the increase in Housing New Zealand’s building programme.
The funding is set to come from various avenues – including the sale of former state houses in areas like Tauranga and the private sector sale of some of the houses in Housing New Zealand’s redevelopments.
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