Six things that mattered this week, plus my Sunday reads
My personal thoughts on the week's top six news items for paying subscribers, some weekend reading links and one fun thing
TL;DR: For paying subscribers, here's my pick of the week’s top six news developments with my personal reflections, plus my suggestions for King’s Birthday reading and listening. There’s also one fun thing.
In summary this week, my six takeaways were:
National confirmed its approach to increasing housing supply would lean more heavily on greenfields development of standalone homes than medium density apartment and townhouse development on brownfields sites, with all the infrastructure funded by marginal home buyers, which in my view will stunt new supply, increase the value of existing homes and create even larger and more unfunded climate, health and productivity liabilities for the Crown;
Housing Spokesperson Chris Bishop confirmed National wanted to continue a 20-year-long policy stance adopted by National and Labour of (unspecified or undebated) strong population growth without more public funding for infrastructure, which in my view is a recipe for even more land price inflation, infrastructure deficits and low-productivity-low-wage development;
The backlash against cycle lanes in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch ramped up this week, with opponents to the Thorndon Quay cycleway in Wellington taking their protest to the Appeals Court, opponents of the existing ‘pop-up’ Park Terrace cycleway in Christchurch demand a vote next week to rip it out and Auckland’s Mayor Wayne Brown pushing ahead with austerity-driven plans to block and de-fund cycleways;
The Labour Government announced vague and inadequate plans to help councils pay for repairs to infrastructure and to buy back 700 properties deemed uninhabitable and worth about $1 billion, again driven by the bi-partisan fiscal settings aimed at keeping net debt falling and well below 30% of GDP through low public investment on infrastructure and ongoing fiscal surpluses driven by sinking lids on operational spending in real per-capita terms to keep taxes low;
Fresh housing market data showed a bottoming out of prices and the potential, in my view, for a 10-20% immediate bounce in the wake of a clear National/ACT victory on October 14; and,
A Wellington City Council inquiry after the fatal Loafers Lodge fire found there were 25 other high-density-living boarding houses in Wellington, including four without building warrants of fitness, and that the Fire Service unsuccessfully warned the council against allowing an expansion of Loafers Lodge to its top floor because of a lack of exit routes.
There’s more detail, analysis and charts on takeaways below the paywall fold, along with a fun thing. Join the community supporting our public interest journalism on housing unaffordability, climate change inaction and poverty reduction by upgrading to becoming a paying subscriber. I’d love to see you in our comments, Chat and in The Hoon.
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