Christchurch councillor says fighting government on housing was a 'balls-up'

RNZ News

4 hours ago

Photo:
RNZ / Niva Chittock
Christchurch City Council has wasted years and millions of dollars while being distracted from more pressing priorities in its protracted fight with central government over housing intensification, Halswell Ward councillor Andrei Moore says.
He characterised the whole affair as a costly "balls-up" which had held up the business of council and resulted in a confused policy allowing multi-storey apartment blocks in parts of suburban Christchurch, but not in areas neighbouring the city centre.
However, Tony Simons - chair of a coalition of residents associations which campaigned against many of the measures - embraced being labelled a 'NIMBY' and warned the government's decision gave developers free rein.
Three years ago the council rejected
the policy introduced by the then-Labour government with support from the National Party
to enforce sweeping intensification rules on swathes of Christchurch and other major cities in an effort to supercharge housing supply.
Instead the following year, it notified a proposed change to the district plan -
plan change 14
.
More than 1000 submissions,
government-appointed investigators
,
ombudsman complaints
, multiple extensions and an independent hearing panel later, the council
accepted many of the panels recommendations last year
.
However, the council rejected 20 of the hearing panel's recommendations, leaving the final decision in the hands of Resource Management Act Reform Minister Chris Bishop.
Last week, Bishop
declined the vast majority of the council's wishes
. The decision meant parts of the city - around larger suburban shopping centres - would be zoned for higher-density housing, predominantly apartments.
Mayor Phil Mauger
described the decision as a "kick in the guts"
.
The minister's decision cannot be appealed. The council's last potential recourse was to request a judicial review.
Chris Bishop.
Photo:
VNP/Louis Collins
But Moore said it was time to move on.
"We've spent millions of dollars and four years, only to end up making a complete balls-up of the plan," he said.
The council had been "trying its luck" with the ministerial referrals, "as opposed to basing them on meaningful evidence".
It was difficult to estimate how much could have been saved if the council accepted the government's decision in 2022, but Moore said the extra spend would be substantial.
"Our council ended up trying to oppose intensification basically everywhere it could - it wasn't very strategic," he said.
The fight had also created a backlog of other work.
"We've got this great big pile up of plan changes we need to be doing. The central city noise
plan change
, for example, ideally that would have got underway years ago," Moore said.
The haphazard process had also resulted in anomalies.
"We've ended up where you can build up to 10 storeys in an outer suburbs like Hornby, but in some areas surrounding the central city you can't build up at all, and frankly that's just stupid, and bad planning.
"We knew what we were going to be made to do - to enable housing in the centre areas and on the transit routes - so we should have been enabling housing where we thought it made sense."
It was unlikely high-rise apartment blocks would spring up in suburban Linwood, Hornby or Riccarton any time soon, Moore said. But he looked forward to some of the barriers to building apartment blocks being removed.
"Apartments are often so much better designed than townhouses are, but because it's so hard to build them in Christchurch, they're not getting built."
The bulk of new residential building in the city centre had been two- or three-storey townhouses, which he said were a "waste of space - that's exactly where you need to build up".
Many opponents of the changes had "never had to take out an emergency loan to pay their rent", and others who wanted to develop semi-rural land were ignoring the cost of the infrastructure needed, Moore said.
He said he was not concerned with the inevitable backlash from the residents' associations.
"I struggle a lot more when people have nowhere to live."
Combined Residents' Association chair and council candidate in this year's local elections, Tony Simons, agreed much of the multimillion-dollar exercise had been unnecessary, but for very different reasons.
The city did not have a problem with housing supply, but rather an issue with housing affordability, he said.
"Unfortunately, I don't believe plan change 14 is going to address housing affordability much at all. What it is really going to do - what Chris Bishop has decided - is to let developers build what they want, pretty much where they want, and that's a shame."
He was disappointed the minister did not accept the council's proposed changes, which were "good for Christchurch".
He had no problem with increasing density in the CBD, but said the type of intensification the changes allowed - smaller studio, one- and possibly two-bedroom units - were already oversupplied.
"We're not building housing for families - if there is a housing supply shortage, it's probably in those sorts of properties in the inner city, which are slowly disappearing," he said.
Simons did not resile from the 'NIMBY' ('not in my backyard') label.
"When I talk about my backyard, I'm talking about Christchurch, not my own backyard. I'm talking about protecting the city, the fabric of Christchurch."
Bill McKay
Photo:
Alexia Russell
University of Auckland senior lecturer in architecture and planning Bill McKay said there would not be a flood of apartments built overnight.
"When we make planning changes, it's like turning the tap on to fill the bath. It doesn't mean that… these changes will happen immediately everywhere," he said.
"In this case we're turning the tap on for more density, meaning more apartment buildings, and that offers different lifestyles for people - I think that's a good thing because we've got a tonne of suburban housing in this country."
Apartment developments had been more successful in boosting affordable, quality housing in Auckland, he said.
"We've got some very good five-, six-storey apartment buildings going up in Auckland at the moment and they are a decent quality… you notice that once people buy into those apartment buildings because of the quality, because of the community, because of their location, they don't come up for sale much again, whereas the townhouses are more of a worry."
The focus needed to be on the quality of development, McKay said.
"It's not whether the apartment building or townhouse is good or bad, it's whether it's in the right place and crucially, whether it's built to a decent quality - otherwise we're just building slums for ourselves in the future."
Sara Templeton
Photo:
Supplied / Christchurch City Council
Heathcote Ward councillor and mayoral candidate Sara Templeton said the minister's decisions were not unexpected. It was important to plan properly for the future while listening to the community, and the process had been "really time consuming", she said.
But it was "time that we get on with it".
"We are due to grow by over 30,000 within Christchurch city in the next 10 years and these people need homes to live in, so the developers need certainty as to where they can provide those homes," she said.
The council had until December to make a decision on Medium Density Residential Standards - which could allow three three-storey townhouses to be built without a consent.
However, legislation to allow councils to opt out of the standards was working its way through Parliament. The law change was included in the government's second tranche of changes to the Resource Management Act, the Resource Management (Consenting and other System Changes) Amendment Bill, which was
introduced under urgency and passed its first reading in December
.
The bill is with the Environment Select Committee, which is due to report back this month.
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