New Nelson Hospital to cater for just one eighth of likely population growth

Briefly in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Tuesday, May 27:

1. Aiming to limit new capital expenditure on hospitals to constrain Government debt to GDP below 50% of GDP, the Coalition has opted for a new Nelson Hospital with an extra 41 beds. That’s less than half the expansion at less than half the cost of Labour’s proposal in 2023 to add 92 new beds to cope with official projections of population growth in the Nelson/Marlborough/Tasman region of 0.4% per year over the next 15 years. See more in The Lead below.

2. That’s despite population growth in the region in the last five years of over 1.6% per annum. That means continued population growth at that level would be eight times larger than the growth catered for by a hospital that Health Minister Simeon Brown said yesterday would be enough for 50 years. See The Lead below.

3. A sudden and intense downpour in Nelson yesterday flooded many streets and blew out manhole covers. It also overwhelmed parts of the existing hospital. But none of the media reports mentioned these events are likely to be more frequent and more intense because of climate change. The hospital infrastructure planning has not taken into account climate change, let alone likely population growth. See more in The Sidebar below.

4. Former National MP and globally-renowned economist on womens’ pay, Marilyn Waring, warned yesterday as she launched a ‘People’s inquiry’ into pay equity laws rewritten under urgency that she had seen what aggressive and regular use of urgency to pass legislation had meant under her then-PM Robert Muldoon in 1984. See more in Quote of the Day below.

5. Over a fifth of the townhouses, units and apartments for sale in Auckland are new-builds, emphasising the swamped and frozen nature of the housing market in our largest city, where property developers stuck with unsold, but not-priced-to-clear inventory are being forced to become landlords. Some are even offering $750 grocery vouchers to get tenants. See Number of the day below.

6. The income needed to get a first-home loan in the United States has more than doubled since Covid, pricing out an entire generation from homeownership in the world’s largest economy. See Chart of the day below.

There’s more analysis below the paywall fold and in my daily podcast above for paying subscribers¹

The Big Six on Tuesday, May 27

The Lead: Hospital to cater for just 1/6th of growth