(National Party media release)
Officials cast serious doubt over the effectiveness of the Government’s housing package in the months before its announcement, questioning whether it would increase the supply of housing and outlined its dire impact on the lives of renters, National’s Housing spokesperson Nicola Willis says.
“The advice from officials shows the package wouldn’t make a difference to the supply of housing, instead they would likely increase rents. All of which was evident to National when the Government announced its package.
“The Government panicked and turned to rent controls as the potential answer. Rent controls would have a chilling effect on our housing market, they would discourage investors from building new homes and therefore increasing the supply of housing.
“First home buyers are predominantly renters, any measures that drive up rents only serve to make it harder for first home buyers to put together a deposit, further locking them out of the market.
“Building more houses is the most important action for addressing our housing shortage and delivering for first-home buyers.
“National has a plan to require every major city and town to immediately remove restrictions locking-up land and stalling intensification, while also giving councils the cash injections they need to deliver a much-needed surge in new house building.
“What the advice from officials shows is the Government is more interested in PR spin and fancy announcements than putting forward policies that will make a positive impact on those shut out of our housing market.”
Not only does more building land need to be available but the costs need to be substantially reduced. One area that seriously needs looking at is the enormous legal and administrative costs of sub-dividing along with huge RMA compliance costs which have driven up land values to the present unaffordable level. Also both central and local Govt need to accept large infrastructure spending will be required to take housing
away from our prime horticultural land continually being encroached on, to eg… the
far less productive clay foothills in the Nelson Tasman region where I live.
No sign of any housing package working yet.
In fact we are still living in the fallout of National and Labour policy’s which have stuffed up the country for at least a generation.
Right now there are to many people in the country for the available infrastructure and Labours borrowings are what $100 billion!!
Instead of using the borrowings to fund needed instrastructure it’s all been used for donations to Labour’s friends to buy their votes.