Cure. I'm Richard Martin in for Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page Daily Podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Auckland is under pressure to make space for two million homes and counselors have little choice in the matter.
On September twenty fourth, the city's Policy and Planning Committee will decide whether to press ahead with the existing Plan Change seventy eight, which allows three story housing across most of the city, or back a new plan that concentrates apartment blocks up to fifteen stories around key transport hubs. Both options have sparked heated debate, from fears of flooding and towers overshadowing suburban homes to arguments that the city
desperately needs more density to tackle the housing crisis. Minister for Arima Reform, Chris Bishop, has made it clear that Auckland must provide for growth while promising locals a stronger voice in how it plays out. So what's really at stake for Auckland is and how much power does the council actually have Today? On the front page, New Zealand Herald's senior reporter Simon Wilson joins us to break down
the battle over Auckland's housing future. All right, So first off, simon what exactly are these designing changes that have been proposed.
At the moment. Auckland Council has a plan in place that says that it will create the capacity for two million homes in the city over the coming decades. This is a requirement of the previous government and has been in place with the existing government until now. The existing government, however, told Auckland Council that it could get out of that option if it produced a new plan that's still allowed for two million homes but didn't have the instruction that
was there in the labor plan. That or pretty much all property could be subdivided and pretty much all property, even subdivided could go up to three stories. So the Auckland Council has produced a new draft plan change that proposes there will be the capacity for those for all those homes. It doesn't mean that it'll be built, but
it's a capacity. But it focuses the development around train stations, along arterial roads and in town centers, places where there is already the infrastructure for denser development, and at the same time has recognized because the government has instructed it to keep the two minion capacity. It's recognized that it has to also allow more density in various other parts
of the city. So some of the suburbs and some parts of some of the suburbs will have a denser capacity than is currently the case.
And so you mentioned the Labor government putting thing a place. That's the Plan Changed seventy eight. It's cored this controversial sort of directive. Parts of that have been progressed, but why is the government looking to replace that?
So Plan Change seventy eight is based on something called the MDRS, the medium Density Residential standards. These were originally introduced by Labor and National under the Labor government. It was a coalition deal that they would both support them, and the idea there was that it took the very contentious housing issue away from partisan politics because both sides agreed and recognized that long term development of the city was required and we weren't going to get it if
it became too much a question of party squabbling. So that was the plan, but National reneeded on that deal before the last election. So the MDRS was what said that basically everything can go up to three stories anywhere and there's a lot of opposition to that. The new plan change proposal comes in and under the government saying okay, you can, you can be more flexible about it. You can do more density where it's a good idea to do it, and not have as much density where it's more problematic.
Yeah, because this talk of like obviously the Hawkland floods might be a contributing fact. There's been sort of discussion that it's addressing zoning issues and those high risk areas. How much of that actually is that.
Is an important part of it. Under the MDRS and Plan Chained seventy eight, the rules were that you couldn't downsize the capacity of sections. So where after the Anniversary weekend floods and cyclone Gabriel at the beginning of twenty twenty three, Auckland Council recognized really clearly that it had a whole range of area parts of the city where they were at risk of flooding or coastal erosion and it was not a good idea to allow more housing
in those places. In fact, the reverse that to it. Okay, regulations prevented the dune zoning of those areas. So the new plan allows for that so they have established a whole range of areas, but eighty percent of them are on the coast. Auckland has an enormous coastline because it's two coastlines, and the rest are flood areas that are liable to flood. In the Wairau Valley, some parts of Henderson and West Auckland margery places that were it is simply not appropriate to build.
Aside from just abstaining from the vote, there are two options at place well.
The proposal in front of council that they will vote on next week is to adopt the new plan change. The legal language is that they will notify it. It doesn't mean that it becomes the law. It means that it then becomes open to public consultation and there is a lengthy process for that. If they don't notify the new plan change, then Plan Change seventy eight, the existing one, which creates the three x three housing density situation, that will remain in place. So it's a yes no on
the new one. But the choice they have counselors are facing between those two options, both of which allow the capacity of two million homes.
I thought, like Chris Bishop said that you know, promising to allow Aucklanders to have their saying that what is that process?
Okay, So Bishop has announced just this week what the consultation process will be. It was always assumed there would be one, but it was unclear exactly what it would be. And so what Bishop has made clear now is that from early November until just before Christmas there will be an open public consultation process. Now early November is significant because that is the time when the new council, because we've got council elections underway and that's the time when
the new council will take office. They will be in charge of that consultation. It won't be something happening in the middle of the election campaign and that's a good thing for everybody. And then that something like six seven week period of public consultation will be followed next year
by an independent hearings panel being established. These are experts in the field and they will hear submissions from They will hear the submissions and consider the submissions of everybody who wants to front before them who's submitted in that
public consultation process. At the end of this year, and that whole process, the Minister says, will probably taken around eighteen months, so there is a very there's a good period of time for the public to have their say formally as part of the process, and then there is a lengthy period of the panel considering that and hearing from that and deciding what to recommend. It is a standard process, but it is the Minister's now made it very clear that they're not going to convent that in
any way. It will be done properly.
As someone who's never engaged in a public forum like that, like, how do those exactly work, that feedback process and how likely is it to actually change it?
So there will be a whole range of public submissions and it will be as simple as you will, I imagine, going on previous experience, you'll be able to go onto the council website and fill in a form or send them a one sentence note saying I object to this or I love this.
Through too.
There will be groups that get lawyers involved and do very considered submissions. There will be groups who get planners and other experts involved and make their submissions on the basis of that, they spend some money, and then the Independent Hearings Panel their job is to filter all that and assess it and the fact that you, as a member of the public, have done your It costs me nothing, but I have a heartfelt opinion and I want them
to know about it. Now. They'll recognize that for what it is and they'll consider that properly.
Or they're supposed to.
But they will also, of course have a whole lot of that expert submitted material as well to consider, and they'll do a balance and the council will report on it too. They'll say, we've had this many submissions from the public, We've had this many submissions from lobby groups, We've had this many submissions from the expert areas. These are the opinions that we've had from other parts of the democratic process, like the local boards and so on.
They'll report on all that, so we'll be able to see all that, and they'll probably quantify it, so we'll know roughly the public opinion was sixty forty this way or that way or whatever it is. They will tell.
Us do we have any indication sort of which way counsel or general public are leaning between the options?
Well, there's no single view. If you go to a public meeting in mud Eden or remu Era parnell as I've been doing. You'll hear some very angry locals. If you go out to Mangaee, which I did last weekend, you won't find them talking about it at all. They Marngoy is a fascinating suburb because it was built after the war to house the floods of people migrating to Auckland, particularly Maori from the north. It was built without with
hardly any proper sewage and water services. It was very very basic that all came to a head and was very problematic. Margarray in the last ten to fifteen years has been very substantially rebuilt. There are a lot of apartments and denser housing. They've got good services. They put it in underground. It cost money to do it because they have to do it underground, and it's quite a transformed suburb now down there. In this election, they're not
talking about oh my god, we don't want density. They've got it. They like it because it's given them warm, dry, safe houses to live in and created communities. They're talking about other issues, you know, like employment. Those sorts of things very different depending on where you go. If you got to fung A Perrara, was there last weekend. Again they're talking about the inability of infrastructure to help with
development up there. And it's different again from what's happening in the central city.
When you go to those suburbs where they are getting really fired up about this. What are the concerns that they're raising.
I think there's two main areas of concern. One of them is the minister has said that around the railway stations that are close to the central city, which he's calling the CRL stations, like what used to be Munden and now to be known as Mongopho in Kingsland and Morningside, those stations will have the capacity to take buildings at are fifteen stories tall, and so people are worried about that.
The second concern is not the fifteen stories, but people living in leafy suburbs, in nice villas with their neighbors and villas are worried that a three or a six story apartment block might appear on their street or might appear right next to them. And so that's it, and that's actually fundamentally a separate concern. There are two concerns there.
Most quite possibly many people would say, if we're going to have growth in the city, people have to live somewhere and putting dents living around railway stations, particularly because the CURL will transform the railway network and double its capacity, that's a good place to put them. And that's a different issue from saying, do we how many apartments do we want in those leafy suburbs, those villa suburbs.
If you like, yeah, it's because you know, we're talking about quite affluent suburbs, and especially you know people outside of Auckland as well might be looking at these Champagne problems. Are these legitimate concerns or are these just like sort of not in my backyard.
It depends whether you're in one of the streets concerned. Shane Henderson, who is a counselor out at Tiatatu in the Henderson in the Waitaker re Ward there, he argues very strongly that Tata two is being completely built out with apartments because those suburbs closer to town, which have better services, much better services, particularly transport and water, are refusing to allow development there. So you could say that's nimbiaism. It's easy to say the word nimbiaism. Personally, I think
that's a good example of it. Not in my backyard. It's quite literal. But of course people who don't want the character of where they live changed to say, it's not nimbiaism. It's preserving character and heritage, and there are values that we need to look after, so you know that's where they come from. One of the ironies on it is that there was a report that I wrote up over the weekend about where the demand in Auckland
is for apartment living. The two suburbs or the biggest demand are Anywhere and Mount Eden, and that is largely people who live there now but whose kids have left home or they've retired. They want to downsize. They want to stay living in their suburb, but they don't want to stay living in the big family home anymore. They want somewhere smaller that is still good, so they want apartments.
So while family X living in a really nice house and Remuera might not want apartment blocks near them, they're neighbors who are retiring do want the apartment block because they want to live in it. So that's a inside the suburb engine.
Like we've picked the first five CRL stations, they are the most important stations. We just really want to get it into law. That these stations like Kingsland Morning Side for example, you know, we really should be having dense apartments around there. They're not going to happen straight away. It's not like you're gonna wake up tomorrow and find a fifteen story building next to Kingsland train station. But over the next few years you will see more buildings
like that in these key stations. We've come over the top with CRL and actually the men supports that. There people sort of saying, well, I'm sort of forcing them to do it, and in some senses I am in the sense that we're legislating for it. But the Mayor and I've had a lot of discussions around it, and he's actually on the press release we issued yesterday around it. So there's a lot of support from Mayor Brown and many councilors and awkward for it.
In terms of the ones around the Transport hubse we talked about the fifteen story potentially apartment blocks. Chris Bishop mentioned that, you know, the head calls them the CRL sort of things. You know, that's potentially opening soon hopefully, but is that infrastructure, the transport infrastructure going to be able to support that many more people living around those hubs.
Yes, it is one of the things that people say in those suburbs where they don't want the density to happen, is that infrastructure should happen first. If they don't want the density to happen, they probably don't want it at all, so they probably don't want the infrastructure either. But actually it doesn't work like that. Under the old Auckland Unitary Plan passed in twenty sixteen, they said in thirty fifty years time, we're going to have the capacity to do
this much housing. They didn't have all the infrastructure in place, they just knew that over those decades it would be developed. And that is what's happened, certainly with the CRL and with wastewater also in central Auckland. So the CRL is one of the two really big projects that they've been building, and the other one is something called the Central Interceptor, which is a big wastewater pipe that runs right through the Isthmus and takes the waste out to Mungery where
the big plants are. And that will revolutionize the capacity of Isthmus Auckland to manage wastewater, particularly when they're a store. It should mean that there is no fecal contamination on the beaches any longer. That's a major change. Maline is one of the suburbs that will directly benefit from that. So that infrastructure is there, but in places where it more is needed. Partell is a good example. Parnell pipes
have burst recently, quite famously. There is a plan. Water Care has a major plan for the whole city in fact of when it's going to build the new infrastructure, and it's all staged according to what they understand the demand to be. So that's underway. It's not like the council's doing nothing.
It's funny, like we're talking about all these different suburbs and like it seems that you look at the maps of the proposed changes and it's like they've just circled an entire suburb. Gone, Yeah, the apartments can go here, the three stories can go here, how much like Nuance is normally Yeah, something like that.
So you are right. The government put the council on a very strict timetable to get those new maps done. And some of them are AI generated and there are mistakes of them. There are places in those plans where you go that's clearly the map makers or AI whoever it was or whatever it was, assumed that was a bigger wider road than it is. You're just not going to be able to carry sustain that many people living
on it. So those things will change the consultation that we will see next week when the Council comes back to decide on the new plan change, there will be revisions to those maps, but there'll be more. The notification period is one of the reasons for it is it allows everybody to say you've got it wrong here, and for the Council to have a really good, careful look
at that and to modify the plans accordingly. So there will be changes that Meghan Tyler, who's the Council's Chief Planning officer, she says, you know, that's just the normal process. Of course, we'll do it because that's what we always do when we have plan changes. So we can expect that happening as well.
So with these maps, though I've read about there are overlays which then override what's been that's right.
One of the examples of an overlay is flood risk, which you might say this suburb is going to be zoned for, or this part of the suburb is going to be zoned for six story apartments because it's got an arteria road running through it. But actually in that part of it it's prone to flooding there, so there'll be an overlay that protects that from development, and that
is what's called a special character overlay. Another kind of special character overlay, which is much more valued by many people, is where the housing is judged to have a particular historic value. I suppose it might not be a historic it be it might be a subdivision of extremely exciting architecturally designed new places that want that are going to be preserved, But actually that's not how it works in reality. Villas, bungalows and other historic places where there's a concentration of
historic housing that gets an overlay on it. And the best example in Auckland is Devenport. Devenport, apart from navy buildings, has no buildings of any height at all. There's an overlay over there. No one's been allowed to build anything, so it's just the old houses.
And how do these overlays come into it?
So what that means is if you think it a think of a place like the Mungofold station or the Kingston Railway station, there are places near those stations that are within the walkable areas which have a concentration of historic housing, and so there's a ring on the map if you like that says okay, in those areas, you're not going to have the density requirements that places outside
that ring will be subjected to. There are fewer special Character areas is preserving historic housing in the new plan change than there were in Plan Change seventy eight. I think it's something like fifteen hundred fewer homes. Therefore, there is concern that the city could lose a number of those historic homes. When I say historic, I live in one of them. Now. I live in a special Character area where actually in our street almost all the houses
are workers cottages. They were built in the nineteenth century. They're very simple, but over the years people have put false or new verandas on them in the colonial style. My house had the previous owners to us did that. It looks very pretty, but it's fake, as the verandas on most of my neighbours' houses. They are fake too. But the council went down that street and went this is lovely and called it a special character So that limits the development on our street, which is I think
kind of weird. Which is not to say that genuine villa streets, as there are many in Mount Eden and Pontsybu Graylin, Devenport, et cetera, not to say that they they are the same, they villa streets of villa streets.
Having said that, in Mount Eden, you drive around Mount Eden, you will see a lot of apartment blocks already, which happened in the seventies, and a lot of what's called sausage flats, where because the height limit was in place, developers built just to one or two stories, and there's a whole lot of apartments in a row back from the street, and they're called sausage flats in the sense that they look like a six pack of sausages there sitting next to each other, and you won't have any
green space, a very small exactly, whereas if if that had been built as a sex story apartment block, you could have had a park around it, you know, for the for the residents. So that's one of the reasons why people are saying, actually, sausage flats is not a good way to develop us up. The other factor that is significant in this is what's called walkable catchments. So around the city center Auckland City Center there is a
twelve hundred meter walkable catchment. Effectively, they've said if you can walk, if it's fifteen minute walk from downtown, then you can build densely in that area. And for the railway stations it's an eight hundred meta radius for a ten minute walk. It's not an absolute radius, it's not just a circle. They looked at the geography, they looked
at the things like where the railway lines are. You can't just walk across a railway line, of course, and a good example of that is Kingston Railway station, where if it was just a circle, the walkable catchment would include Great North Road on the other side of the motorway. On the west side of the motorway, it doesn't because that's a big dip and it's a longer walk. So the walkable catchmentsps on the railway station side of the motorway.
So they did take account of all that. But in those walkable catchments it will be possible to build more densely because those are the places where they want people to live close to the train station. Unless there's a special character over it's complicated.
Finally, I just want to circle back to something at the start. Might be sound quite surprising to hear this number of two million homes, but that's not actually like a promise of we're going to build two million homes.
That's correct, and it's not too many more either, as many people have been saying. I find one of the ways that's quite useful to look at it is to think, if the council knows that we're going to build, let's say we're going to build twenty thousand new homes a year. In fact, they've never got to that. They've got to eighteen, and the peak year, which is twenty twenty three, slipped back a bit now. I think it's fourteen at the moment. But let's say twenty. Let's say the economy picks up,
growth occurs, and they're doing twenty. That will mean over thirty years there's something like six hundred thousand new homes, not the two million. But if they only zoned for six hundred thousand new homes over the next thirty years, that would mean that every homeowner, every property owner, whether you're a developer or just living in your own home, would be required to build to the maximum the zoning
allows on that section. We would tell you own your section, but it's zoned for three stories, so you've got to build three stories. You know. We would tell a developer, sorry, you can't put three story townhouses there. We want you to build a six story apartment block there. And the developer would say, it's my land. I can do this the way I want to because it's my land. And they might have a very good reason for not putting
six stories in because that's more expensive. You've got to build a stronger building, you've got to put in lifts, you've got to put in fire sprinklers and other things. It's a more expensive proposition. Some developers don't have the cash flow or don't want to take the risk to do that. We don't live in a country where people can be told what to do with their property in that way. So that's why there's a much bigger capacity than we're going to need, so that choices exist for
property owners. And it also indicates that over time, although there will be more density, it absolutely does not mean there will be density everywhere.
Well, thank you so much for joining. I shan't keep you any longer. Yeah, I know, You're going to have a very busy week next week dealing.
With this great questions.
Thank you very much for joining us. That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at inzidherld dot co dot z. The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye. I'm Richard Martin. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.