New report a pathfinder for affordable housing

A report released today by LGNZ provides a roadmap for councils finding their way through the complex policy, regulatory and market tools available to help enable more affordable housing developments for New Zealanders.

With demand soaring, rents rising and building costs increasing, many councils are grappling with how best to facilitate affordable housing developments in their communities.  While the Government has begun to implement a range of legislation and organisations, understanding how they all fit together and are best utilised is difficult at best.

The report released today, “Policy, Regulatory and Market Resources to Create Affordable Housing,” provides councils with details of the tools available, their advantages, disadvantages, and any lessons learnt in their development and implementation so far.

“Communities across New Zealand are facing housing pressures, and a feature of this has been a lack of development in the affordable housing segment, which plays a critical role in helping people transition from social housing through to market provided housing,” says LGNZ President Dave Cull.

“LGNZ’s latest report aims to make the provision of affordable housing easier by providing an accessible guide to all the resources that out there, as well as guidance on how to use them, which until now have been stored in a wide variety places.”

“Make no mistake, we do not see this as a silver bullet that will deliver reasonable priced housing to New Zealanders.  That is going to take coordinated action at a central and local government level, to tackle the factors that make it so expensive and difficult to build in New Zealand.”

“But, we need to do everything we can now to help kiwis while this work is under way, to repair our broken housing system.  There is more that we as councils can do to help, particularly in the social housing space, and we are currently pushing central government to remove the hurdles that prevent local government from being more active in providing housing to those most in need.”