Housing at Any Cost?

The battle lines have been drawn, on Twitter, Facebook, and in Council planning meetings.  We are either pro-intensification, or we don’t care about equitable housing. This forced and simplistic dichotomy makes any debate about how we do intensification, often very difficult to have. 

The recent policy announcement from the Government on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is a blunt tool that at best won’t make any real change, and at worst will cause land values to increase, make planning for infrastructure needs almost impossible, and result in the creation of future slums. Back in 2014, then Finance Minister Bill English said "There's no point having beautifully designed cities if 90 percent of New Zealanders can't afford to live in them. We might have to get a bit ugly.” At the time Labour said that would be a ‘disaster’, but now they appear to be singing from the same song sheet. Gone is the egalitarian ideal that we all (regardless of wealth or privilege) have a right, not just to shelter, but to a home that has sunlight, warmth, comfort, outlook, and is pleasing to the senses. Media and politicians typically focus on physical wellbeing, in terms or warmth and sanitary construction and plumbing (all very important), but forget that our mental wellbeing is also affected by our surroundings, including - especially - our homes. This debate about housing isn’t just one of statistics, it’s one of design. We design policy, we design systems, city plans, and infrastructure. We design communities. We design homes.

Bryan Finoki in Design Observer April 2015, said:

“Architecture is a prism for pondering more than design. It is the dominant means by which humanity's landscapes are formatted for social life. We are a social species, but perhaps more than that, we are a spatial species; and ultimately, because of these relations, a political one, too.”

Architecture is both a political act, and a political experience. This is true of intimidating or banal public offices (I’m thinking of the Whau Local Board office in New Lynn), that leave members of the public uncertain of their welcome and their place. It is equally true of housing that tells its occupants that they are worth less consideration and comfort, than those who design, sell, rent, and legislate for that housing. Design matters, because people matter.

Intensification can be a social and environmental good. It can enable us to create walkable, accessible communities, with good provision of services and amenities, secure, warm and dry housing, all without encroaching on natural and rural environments. Of course, this is assuming that we have designed our intensification intentionally to create these communities. Despite what we are told about it being a tool to tackle both climate change and the housing crisis, the only real intention in the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is to enable anyone with a bit of urban land to put up to three dwellings on it. There are some significant problems with this approach. 

Infrastructure

At the most practical level, Councils need to plan the upgrade of existing and construction of new infrastructure (parks, cycleways, public transport, water supply, sewers, stormwater systems) to meet not just existing needs but anticipated future needs. When intensification can happen anywhere in the city, co-ordinating infrastructure with development becomes impossible to manage. 

Enabling councils to determine which areas were to be developed when, in line with infrastructure planning, would also enable more cohesive neighbourhoods of similar density to grow up, before the next area is tackled.  Councils need to be able to identify key locations suitable for rapid intensification (for example Great North Road as it rises from New Lynn to Kelston, or the central area of Glen Eden around the library, playhouse, shopping area and train station) and masterplan these for location, orientation, and typology, to achieve the desired density while enhancing the urban form.  This would enable a focus on infrastructure upgrades and construction suitable to the planned end result. 

This sort of approach is often dismissed by the left-wing as ‘urban renewal’ aka gentrification. But either we tackle the root causes of gentrification and wealth inequality or we accept urban inequity, by never providing less well-off areas with new parks, or squares, cycle lanes, and other amenities. In a housing market driven by capitalism, desirable places to live (homes and communities) will always be more expensive than undesirable places to live. We should challenge the commodification of pleasure, comfort, and dignity in housing. Council led master-planning should include Kāinga Ora, papakāinga, co-housing, and third sector housing, to ensure that we have mixed, equitable communities, across our cities.

Quality

As flawed as it is, the Unitary Plan is enabling development across the isthmus. In areas like Ponsonby and Grey Lynn, where the planning maps get finer grained, highlighting ridge lines and main roads for intensification on sizeable blocks of former commercial and light industrial land, this is manifesting as generally well considered apartment building, often with commercial or retail on the ground floor.  In areas like New Lynn and Glen Eden, where the planning maps turn into broad swaths of dark orange Mixed Housing Urban, with no consideration for the existing urban grain or topography, it is manifesting, other than a couple of very large projects, in erratic patches of townhouses and infill housing.  These area already have an as-of-right allowance to build three houses on a site.  Such developments typically maximise the building envelope, with little consideration for the urban realm, spatial relationships, shading of neighbours’, or even their own, outdoor space. The intention behind all this building is profit- not housing the homeless, nor providing affordable housing for young families. There isn’t even any intentionality in design quality. It’s about building and selling as fast and as profitably as possible.

The Bill will principally enable infill housing, like what we are seeing in New Lynn and Glen Eden. What will change is the building envelope that these maximised houses on minimised lots, can expand into. Further the Bill will remove the ability for Council to assess proposals against the orientation of outdoor spaces, the provision of green space (as opposed to permeable area which can be achieved with permeable paving), and the protection of sun and light. Add to this the lack of tree protection, and the existing inequitable distribution of tree cover in Auckland, and things are looking very grey.

The PWC Methodology Report notes: 

“There is a large body of literature suggesting that aesthetic and recreational design choices can affect the health, happiness and productivity of people in urban communities. While aesthetic preferences are diverse across populations, there are several general design principles that are pleasing to a broad demographic and have a degree of broad applicability, such as open space and access to greenery. Urban areas with more open space encourage more physical activity and promote physical wellbeing. Green space and biodiversity are also aesthetic characteristics of an urban location and are linked to both economic and mental health benefits for those in relative proximity of them.”

It’s important to note that intensification is simply the act of increasing population density in a given area or region, not a specific housing typology. We can achieve the same density with different building typologies (single house, duplex, flats, townhouses, or apartments), and different urban design forms, creating different spatial relationships and organisation.  Again, this is something that requires intentional design from the outset.  Jade Kake, in her recent opinion piece in Stuff, suggested introducing form-based codes, similar to the rules set for the Vinegar Lane development in Ponsonby. One reason Vinegar Lane was successful, was that the rules were site specific - that is, when the site was planned, before individual lots were sold, a set of form based rules were designed for that site to produced a site-appropriate result. To achieve this affect across the city, would require masterplanning  selected precincts for development, similar to the process for the Borneo-Sporenburg Wharves development in Amsterdam, the plan for which created habitable public realm and required roof terraces and private courtyards as part of the form based code.  The scheme also ensured a mix of private and public housing. It would be more work for councils, but the end result would be a more equitable, more desirable city.

Maximising the building envelope in infill housing, Glen Eden vs Precinct masterplanning in Borneo-Sporenburg Wharves, Amsterdam.

Photos by Author

Affordability

The General Policy Statement of the Bill, states that it “seeks to rapidly accelerate the supply of housing where the demand for housing is high. This will help to address some of the issues with housing choice and affordability that Aotearoa New Zealand currently faces in its largest cities.” Which sounds good, yet the PWC Cost Benefit Analysis only predicts a slowing of house prices, not a halt, let alone a reduction. We are trapped in a neoliberal mindset that increasing supply will increase choice and affordability, and this is accepted without examination.

Enabling increased development in a capitalist system where land and housing are commodities to be traded, leads to land values increasing, thereby contributing to the continuing cycle of real estate value increase. Glen Eden in West Auckland is currently zoned Mixed Housing Urban under the Unitary Plan. This enables any sites over 900sqm (most if the original sites in the area) to, as of right, have three houses built on them. Now any developable property, effectively anything over 600sqm, is priced on the assumption of the development potential, rather than just the single existing three bedroom house. A review of Barfoot & Thompson sales for July and August in Glen Eden shows three bedroom houses on cross-lease sites and older three bedroom townhouses selling for similar prices around $850k to $900k, while new build townhouses were selling for close to $1mil, not greatly behind a three bedroom house on 700sqm. Current evidence does not suggest that intensification, as a matter of course, increases housing affordability.

Watching the comments on social media after the Bill was announced, gives the impression that people believe these freer rules will enable affordable apartments to be constructed throughout current single house zoned inner suburbs. Theoretically, this is correct; three storey blocks of flats could be built in these areas, but it’s unlikely. Firstly, the sites aren’t, for the most part, big enough, and where they are- in Auckland at least- the site is generally already zoned that way having formally been commercial or light industrial (as seen in Ponsonby and Grey Lynn). Secondly, the owner of the site doesn’t have to develop it. Based on my two decades of experience as an architect, in the wealthier areas, if they do take advantage of the looser development controls and removal of heritage overlays, it’s more likely that they will take the opportunity to build themselves a bigger luxury house, or will build two or three luxury townhouses. They’re not going to be developing their several million dollar property to provide affordable rentals for students, old age pensioners, and the working poor.

As far as choice goes, that is still only for the middle class and wealthy. Those who are desperate for shelter, will take what they can, where they can. Affordable, quality housing for the less privileged will never be provided by the market. Incentives or requirements placed on developers to create an allocation of affordable housing typically result in offsets- or in ‘poor doors’ with access to the affordable flats by a separate, more downscale entrance. If we want affordable housing we need to decouple housing and land from the market, we need to stop them being treated as commodities and investment opportunities. Wide state and council housing provision with income linked rents, is still the best way to achieve our goal.

Jessamine Fraser, BArch (Hons), ANZIA, is a NZ Registered Architect and the director of Rain Studio Architects.  She is also a design tutor at Unitec School of Architecture, and a former local body candidate for the Green Party in the Whau Ward in Auckland.