Maryan Street: Affordable housing initiatives
9 May, 2008 Speech
Affordable housing initiatives
Speech by Housing Minister Maryan Street to Local Government
New Zealand Zones 5 and 6 in Dunedin.
Thank you for inviting me to Dunedin to participate in your Forum, and discuss affordable housing initiatives and the role of local authorities.
Affordable housing is an extremely hot topic at the moment. It is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve the Kiwi dream of owning your own home, even in the erratic housing market at present.
Home ownership
rates have fallen from 74 per cent to 67 per cent between
1991 and 2006. If current trends continue, this rate will
fall to about 62 per cent by 2016, a scenario unpalatable to
me and a great many other New Zealanders.
There is no
quick fix to our affordability problem. Nevertheless,
research has established that there is a broad range of
steps we can take collectively to tackle the affordability
issue. Some of these will have an immediate impact, and are
already doing so. Others will take time to have an
influence.
I want to outline some of these steps today, but before I do so I want to stress that the responsibility for affordable housing does not rest with the government alone. We all have to work together to come up with sustainable solutions to create healthy, balanced communities, and that includes local government.
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate some among you for recognising this, taking a constructive approach to the problem, and assisting central government in developing its suite of proposed initiatives. Clearly, affordability issues will bite in different communities in different ways, and as a consequence different councils will have different priorities.
I recognise that, and our response to housing
affordability needs to be flexible enough to enable us to
apply different tools in different places. What works in
Southland does not necessarily work in Auckland, and vice
versa.
This leads me to one of the government’s
affordability initiatives which I would like to discuss
today, the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial
Authorities Bill, which from this point on I shall refer to
as the Bill.
I introduced the Bill to the House for its
first reading in December last year. You will all be aware
that the government drafted this Bill in response to a
request from territorial authorities for legislative clarity
over their ability to encourage affordable housing.
What
is proposed in the Bill is not new – the United Kingdom,
Australia, United States and Canada are all using similar
tools as those proposed in the Bill, which will allow
councils to offer a range of incentives to developers such
as density bonuses, in exchange for the provision of
affordable housing.
It also prevents the use of
covenants on land titles that aim to exclude social and
affordable housing. These covenants unfairly discriminate
against some of our most vulnerable people, such as older
people, children and people who require assisted living for
various reasons. The use of such covenants is a small but
growing issue.
The Bill does not aim to address building costs. Nor is it the purpose of the Bill to address land supply or land price issues, although it may have a positive effect on these in the future. Instead, the Bill balances the need of the community for affordable housing with developers’ needs for consistent and predictable planning guidelines. It promotes housing choice through ensuring that a range of housing types, tenures and costs are being built in new developments to meet the needs of moderate income households.
Obviously, the definition of affordable housing depends on the market where the housing is located and the size and type of housing. What is affordable in Auckland compared with what is affordable in Invercargill is likely to be quite different.
Consequently, any
definition of affordability needs to be regionally specific
in order to respond to regional variations in house prices
and incomes.
The Affordable Housing Bill seeks to
increase the availability of housing for those who live in
households with low-to-moderate incomes and have no existing
legal or beneficial interests in property. The housing
itself must be priced so people can meet their housing and
other essential living costs.
The Bill enables
territorial authorities to further refine the definition of
affordability and target affordable housing to their local
housing market.
The problem is, there is a huge
diversity in circumstances around the country and one size
does not fit all. Because of this, the select committee
process is invaluable in capturing all the concerns, and we
do have to let that process run its course.
I am aware
the select committee received 21 submissions from local
councils. Many of the councils support the intent or
principle of the Bill, but not the Bill in the current form.
All councils recommend changes to the Bill, and I would like
to assure you that we are looking closely at your concerns.
According to Local Government New Zealand’s
submission, the Bill:
- contains complex and open ended
processes that duplicate and complicate existing
processes
- contains processes that involve risk and cost
to territorial authorities
- contains a number of unclear
definitions and approaches
- does not provide the
mechanisms territorial authorities need to implement
affordable housing policies – by avoiding the necessary
link to the Resource Management Act 1991.
Corporation officials will meet with representatives from Local Government New Zealand to discuss LGNZ’s Alternative Bill, where it differs from the Government Bill and where there is common ground.
The select committee will be hearing the
last of the oral submissions on the 15 May. They will then
present their report to the House on the 10 June.
This
Bill is one of a number of tools to address affordable
housing. In the meantime there is a number of other
initiatives that the Government has to offer.
Housing New
Zealand Corporation provides Housing Innovation Fund loans
and grants to local authorities and community-based
organisations to supply additional housing units, or to
modernise or improve existing housing.
This has grown the
capacity of councils and community groups to meet the social
housing needs of their local communities, and helps meet the
goal of expanded social housing options, affordable rents,
and good quality housing.
Since the Housing Innovation
Fund was established in 2003 the Corporation has invested
around $63.99 million, providing 1,201 social housing units.
This represents 890 new and modernised units provided by
local government, and 311 by community groups (including
those yet to be completed). In addition, the Corporation has
contributed $2.2 million from internal funding, providing 19
social housing units by community groups
An example closer to home that demonstrates the effectiveness of the Housing Innovation Fund and partnerships, is the work of the Queenstown Lakes District Council.
The council recognises that housing affordability is a serious issue for the economic and social well-being of the district and in 2005, it developed the ‘Housing our People in our Environment’ Strategy.
The strategy, otherwise known as HOPE, set out a range of actions that the council and community should take to address issues of housing affordability.
One of
its 32 actions, was to establish a community housing trust.
In 2007, Housing New Zealand Corporation assisted the
council in establishing the Queenstown Lakes Community
Housing Trust, and then the trust, with support from Housing
New Zealand, established a pilot programme called Shared
Ownership to help low to medium income earners into
long-term affordable housing. Housing New Zealand
contributed two million dollars to the pilot programme from
its Housing Innovation Fund.
So far ten households have been approved in both Wanaka and Queenstown, with the first couple in Queenstown moving into their new home last month. The success of this scheme bodes well for a scheme that will achieve a similar outcome, called Shared Equity, which I will launch in July.
The shared equity scheme aims to improve home ownership affordability for modest income households living primarily in moderate to high-priced areas, such as Nelson, Christchurch and Queenstown. Similar to the shared ownership pilot in Queenstown, shared equity would see the Crown take equity stakes in properties as a way of lowering the cost to families.
Another initiative for New Zealanders who may not qualify for shared equity is the Welcome Home Loan scheme.
Welcome Home Loan was piloted in 2003 through Kiwibank, and launched nationwide in 2005. The purpose of Welcome Home Loan is to assist borrowers, who sit just outside the lenders' traditional criteria, into their own home.
These are New Zealanders who have the income to support a home loan, but haven't been able to save the required deposit. Welcome Home Loans assist borrowers by removing, or reducing (this depends upon the amount being borrowed), the requirement for a deposit. They do this by removing the risk to the lender of 100% lending.
The uptake in the South Island of Welcome Home Loans has
been high. As at March 2008, 3,341 people nationwide had
taken up a Welcome Home Loan with a large proportion coming
from the South Island, where 1,475 loans were granted. To
date 24% of the loans granted nationwide have been paid back
in full.
The last initiative of interest is the Kiwisaver
first home deposit subsidy. This is administered by Housing
New Zealand and will be available from 1 July 2010. It is
available for members who have belonged and contributed to
KiwiSaver for three years.
The subsidy, is $1,000 for each year of contribution to the scheme, up to a maximum of $5,000 for five years for each member.
To be eligible for the deposit subsidy your income must be less than $100,000 (for one or two people) or $140,000 (for more than two people). Also, you must buy a lower quartile priced home. Housing New Zealand will review and set the lower quartile price caps annually from 2010. At the moment they are set at $400,000 or less in higher-priced areas such as North Shore City, Auckland City and Queenstown Lakes District, and $300,000 or less in the rest of New Zealand. Housing New Zealand is still designing the finer details of the first home deposit subsidy and application process details will be published before 1 July 2010.
As you are probably aware the government is also investigating a range of other potential initiatives and interventions which it believes may play a role in increasing housing affordability levels. Considerable work is going on in a range of agencies in this regard.
Options include expanding the role of the not-for-profit sector in the provision of social housing, which is obviously relevant to a number of councils. If we want more affordable housing options for our citizens and ratepayers strong partnerships between a range of sectors, including developers and local and central government, must be fostered as we all have distinct roles to play. I look forward to working with you all.
ENDS