Auckland Mayor Len Brown says short of putting up barbed wire around the city and telling Aucklanders to stop breeding, the city is going to grow and needs his council's Unitary Plan to prevent families from being permanently excluded from the housing market.
In a speech to the Transport NZ Summit Brown also said the Government will eventually agree to the Auckland Council's proposed multi-billion dollar central rail loop, something the current government is unwilling to help fund.
Brown said that by 2040, Auckland's population was "expected" to reach around 2.5 million people, meaning up to a million new Aucklanders with 60% of the growth coming from within Auckland, and New Zealand - "our children, and our children’s children."
"This is not a target, but Statistics New Zealand’s best current forecast," said Brown.
"Short of putting barbed wire around our city and telling Aucklanders to stop having babies, our city is going to grow."
The Council's Auckland Plan points to Statistics New Zealand projecting medium population growth of 700,000 and high population growth of one million people for Auckland over the next 30 years. It puts Auckland's current population at 1.5 million, and says "given Auckland’s history of rapid population growth, Auckland Council believes it is prudent to plan for the high-growth projection."
Elsewhere Statistics New Zealand says projections show the Auckland region having the highest annual growth rate of all New Zealand regions between 2006 and 2031, with growth averaging 1.4% between 2006 and 2031, compared with annual average population growth of 0.8% for New Zealand as a whole. Also see David Hargreaves opinion piece: The 'should Auckland go up or out' debate misses the real point - the city is already too big for the country anyway.
This "expected" population growth to 2.5 million, made agreeing the council's draft Unitary Plan "fundamentally important" to Auckland’s future, suggested Brown.
"Without a new plan, that provides for more options for affordable homes, many Auckland families risk being permanently excluded from the housing market," said Brown. "If we are serious about having more options for affordable homes in Auckland, then we need to keep moving this plan forward."
The draft Unitary Plan, Auckland's new development "rulebook" was launched in March with the intention that after feedback and consultation it would be formally notified by the council, ahead of October's council elections, with a three-year period for the plan to legally take effect. The plan envisages 60% of development over the next 30 years taking place within the city's existing urban limits through the development of more high rises and terraced housing. Feedback closes this Friday. See here for all interest.co.nz's articles on the subject.
'Affordable housing & integrated public transport at core of Unitary Plan'
Brown said the Unitary Plan had both affordable housing and integrated public transport at its core.
"That means in the future, as the city grows and as our transport system improves, the options for people to live close to transport links will get better. The plan also includes - for example - limits on the amount of parking in centres where there are good public transport options available, and where we know public transport options will improve over time."
"That means more space is freed up for housing. And it means greater incentives for people to use public transport," Brown added.
"And if you want an environmental benefit - it means more ability to absorb rainwater, and therefore less pressure on the storm-water system."
He also said the draft Unitary Plan includes a proposal for inclusionary zoning.
"This is a requirement for developments to include a percentage of affordable housing that remains affordable in perpetuity," said Brown.
"But the biggest and most profound impacts on affordable housing are likely to be indirect. For example, the plan will make affordable housing developments much more viable, by enabling people to make greater use of land, and by providing more land outside the urban limit. A balanced approach - smarter use of urban land, along with more new land to develop."
On top of this Brown suggested the Unitary Plan limits the cost burdens of new developments on existing ratepayers.
"If all of Auckland’s growth was on greenfield sites outside the existing city, the costs of all those new roads, water and wastewater facilities, and all the other infrastructure needed, then the added cost to existing ratepayers would be significant."
And he said the cheapest way to grow would be from only allowing intensification.
"We’re not doing that because that would curtail the desire of many Aucklanders for a section and a house. But the balanced approach we’re proposing - with up to 40% of growth on new greenfield sites and the remaining on existing land in Auckland - is certainly more cost effective for ratepayers than LA style sprawl."
'The shape of communities will change'
He acknowledged, however, that this meant the shape of many communities will need to change. But said this would be gradual change, over three decades.
"But the fact is we can’t improve options for affordable homes if all of Auckland’s communities stay the same."
Brown said there was a duty to "our children, and to our children’s children," to make Auckland fit for their future.
"If we stick with the fragmented approach of the past, we will fail them. But if we are brave enough to move forward with a new plan for our city, and bold enough to make investments now in our transport system - then we can give all Aucklanders a shot at being residents of the world’s most liveable city."
Extra $400 mln a year needed for transport
Meanwhile, Brown also took the opportunity to spruik the Council's proposed central rail loop. He also acknowledged current sources of funding aren't enough to pay for the Auckland Plan's 30-year transport programme.
"We need to find an extra $400 million a year from 2016 to fund the ongoing improvements needed. It could either come from rates - meaning large rate rises for Aucklanders. Or we can decide on a range of different mechanisms to raise the funding - which puts some of the costs and those that get the most benefit from new infrastructure."
On the central rail loop, he said the Council was working "at pace to designate and secure" its route. He said it would effectively double the capacity of Auckland’s train network.
"The train congestion we saw on the opening night of Rugby World Cup would not have occurred if there had been a central rail loop," said Brown.
On the issue of funding for the central rail loop, Brown said; "I'm confident we will get there. The business case is strong. Aucklanders back it. Eventually the government will need to agree to it."
Auckland's bus network was also undergoing a transformation with a review of every single bus route.
"The current fragmented set of bus routes will soon be replaced by a sensible network, with more frequent buses at peak times and sensible interchanges - so people can move around the city more easily. More broadly, we are working to create a single network of buses, trains and ferries - one that will present an attractive option for those who have never really considered it before. This will include a single ticketing system for trains, ferries and buses - to be completed by the end of this year," said Brown.
85 Comments
Over-population, coming to a spot near you.
Al Bartlett says it so well; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
2.5 million people in Auckland by 2040 from 1.5 million today is only about 1.9% growth per year. 2 million by 2028, 3 million by 2050.
Of course if the population doubles, amount of land per person halves... Those 1/4 acre plots.. yeah, dream on.
The sum of the whole....drelly....would provoke me to ask have you ever left N.Z....?
if your satisfied it's empty here by comparison, take comfort in knowing it could be filled in a heartbeat were immigration allowed or simple occupation for certain Super Powers.
Ya need ta get out more......
One of the many things that is "interesting" about these "the planet is too full and we're all gonna starve" types, is that none of them are "pro defence".
One would have thought that even if 11 billion people really was "too much for the planet", lil' NZ could survive pretty much forever with its 4 million on 300,000 square kilometers - just as long as we have enough Exocets to sink invasion fleets from wherever.
When Auckland Council talks of "affordable housing" they aren't referring to a relationship between take-home pay and housing costs for most, or even for most first home buyers.
What they mean is 'social housing' - something where some unaffordable housing is subsidised for a few; and subsidised by the many who are stuck with those costs which actually makes 'regular housing' even more unaffordable.
Until Auckland Council changes its definition, most aspiring first home buyers will have cruel 'house-or-family' choices, or be forced to 'like' tiny living spaces.
Well give im one then Kleefer....I just did for his sentiment, now if he were to actually run for Council, or at least form a focus lobby group......gees I'd throw my lot in wiv im.....Although I think he's one of those North Shore People who display well reasoned contempt for Auck City's entrenched political and bureaucratic shortcomings.
Not until we see David exercise his considerable influence among likeminded Business forums Gareth.or indeed exercise at all......otherwise he's just another blogger, malcontent, who let the prefects run amok because it was cooler to smoke and hang with the bully boys.......oh ! and the babes o course.
Unfortunately those that ....do...in the bureaucratic sense, tend to be less practical in real situations because they were hatched and raised on ceremony.
Scarfie, please read this, and then decide whether it is really necessary to spend a cent of PUBLIC money on "providing housing" for "those who can't afford it":
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/05/oecd-australian-housing-still-overvalued/#comment-249782
This is the result of Len Brown's "Upside Down Thinking" where the effect becomes the cause....
In Len Brown's mind, the Unitary Plan is the effect caused by unaffordable housing in Auckland, wherest in reality Unaffordable Housing is caused by the Unitary Plan...
(before everybody starts saying the UP is not in effect yet, please be reminded the present MUL is and has the same effect as the UP)
Perhaps Len Brown should consider doing this instead of endless Unitary Plan consultation and the potential of enough backlash that could end his reelection ambitions :
http://qz.com/85661/the-worlds-tallest-building-will-be-in-the-middle-of-an-empty-field-in-china/
In one swoop, he could end his population problem...
According to the article, that building will hold 30,000 people. While impressive for a single building that would not solve the population problem in Auckland. Here's why. If the expected population growth of Auckland is 1.9% (as implied by the expected growth in population in the article), and the current population is 1.5 million, then Auckland will grow in size by approximately 30,000 people this year. So if we had a building like that (and we don't) it would be full in one year.
Or do you suggest we build one a year? In which case...
Given the expected growth rate, by 2050 (at which point we would have built 50 world's largest buildings in total) we would be building two of them per year, just to hold the extra people.
Build one a year then. Or two ! Why not. Not easy, but neither are the alternatives. There is going to be number x more people. And they are going to need to be somewhere. Perhaps Aucklands new suburb of Te Kuiti. In little ticky tacky boxes like the rest of South Auckland
Perhaps Len Brown should consider doing this instead of endless Unitary Plan consultation and the potential of enough backlash that could end his reelection ambitions :
http://qz.com/85661/the-worlds-tallest-building-will-be-in-the-middle-of-an-empty-field-in-china/
In one swoop, he could end his population problem...
David would be a good candidate for sure; but on this issue he does need to go one step further and explain how he would do it differently. Is it the Houston Hugh Pavletich model which seems to be unlimited sprawl, with it unclear to me anyway exactly how his MUD funding for infrastructure would work in an Auckland concept? Is it Labour's government model of paying for 10s of thousands of new cheap houses? Is it the Unitary Plan, but maybe without any subsidies. Assuming whichever of those models really not only give cheaper housing on the fringes, but also significantly drop housing prices throughout the City, is he ready for the consequences? If the answer is to muddle along as we have been, but take away subsidies for those struggling to get housing, either of their rent or some other social housing payment model, where will all the teachers, nurses, cleaners, retail staff, restaurant staff, drivers, and 100 other lowish paid but essential categories of people live?
Actually, David made a definitive statement up-thread, without supporting data.
Hughp does that - 50% of his MM is 'incomes', of which he makes no attempt to ascertain either what underwrites them, and (it follows from the lack of investigation) no attempt to ascertain whether they can continue at even present levels.
That's expected of a tout - but not of an investigative reporter. Admittedly, most economic/business reporters in the country fail the 'investigative' test too, but we have to ask David which he is, here. It's a valid question.
PDK, I agree with David's comment. If someone(s) gets a good at below the market price, someone(s) else has to be supporting that. I cant see how else or what other options there are? I liken that to WFF as well. I read some years ago that a wife/mother said that with WFF they and their 3 or 4 kids could now go one holiday. Like WTF, we chose to have less because of the costs and the future coming issues, so we get no WFF so in effect we are supporting others going on holiday via WFF.
I think its a bit of having your cake and eating it to. Sorry they made such a choice and supporting that is wrong IMHO.
Supporting that they have food and education, yes OK. Spporting them to go on holiday while I cant afford to, no, not OK.
regards
Steven seems to be grasping some basic economics here, which is to be encouraged. There is a famous saying, "there's no such thing as a free lunch".
Scarfie; Steven is (very intelligently BTW) talking about SOME people (selected by bureaucratically run lotto process or something) getting provided an artificially cheap house by way of regulatory mandate.
The "no such thing as a free lunch" principle should make us suspect that the artifically low price paid by those lucky "housing lotto" winners, will have to be recouped by higher prices being charged for "all the other houses".
Steven has "got it" this time. He once "got it" about the fringe land racket - I thought - but his conversion seemed to wear off over time.
This is good informative journalism on the subject:
"Land bought in 1995 for $890,000 – owner will sell for $112m – awesome"by Policy Parrot on June 1, 2013
"The NZ Government is right to demand that Auckland Council release more land for property development.The NZ Herald has found that land bankers – offshore speculators – are capitalising on and reaping massive tax free rewards for doing absolutely nothing. In Flatbush one land banker alone is seeking $130m between two blocks of raw land.
This kind of activity is only occurring because of the draconian controls that Auckland Council and it’s predecessors have held on Auckland’s growth.
There has never been a clearer example of the way in which land bankers are reaping massive gains than this example. Property developers are right to be annoyed. They have to borrow substantial amounts to acquire the land and develop it. The costs are passed along and the end result is sections that are too expensive for most people.
Auckland Council is entirely to blame for land banking. It is a spectacular mistake on behalf of Auckland Council to assume the city can be compacted without massive repercussions. So savage and blunt is the planning tool of the Metropolitan Urban Limit and the proposed Rural Urban Boundary that land within those city limit lines are selling for stellar prices.
The blame lays with the Mayor and his top officials. These people fail to understand the basics of supply and demand. They fail to grip the fact that they are the ones responsible for Auckland’s spiralling house prices.
Off with their heads."
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2013/06/land-bought-in-1995-for-890000-owner-will-sell-for-112m-awesome/
Steven - either he's stuck believeing horsepoo, or he's got a need to peddle it. Who knows, maybe it's both.
But the longer we muck around with those folk, the more time we waste. It's not to their advantage to stall, of course, but they don't/can't see that. They're dinosaurs, and we know that the dinosaur track record didn't ensure their future.
Given where we are, there isn't time to wait for them to die out, so they simply have to be bypassed. Thinking folk can judge a one-note mantra-chanter for themselves, and if there aren't enough thinking folk, we were in trouble anyway.
Dale Smith is more interesting; but gets a fundamental point wrong: Govt (both Central and Local is 'us'. It's not a 'they'. The mind-twist is interesting, and I suspect self-centredness is the driver of the skew.
maybe both....certainly a political outlook...now whether there is a moral oh my god my generation has f**ked up big time, so we'll pretend we havent, possible, but no I dont think so. I do however think Im seeing signs from some other ppl that its dawning on them "what a mess". That leaves fanatical....
In terms of waiting for them to die out, I think by Robert Hirsh's report (2005) it was obvious we were 10 years to late, 8 years ago and intended to do nothing. Personally I think we are both young enough that we'll see it end badly...though in my case once medication becomes unavailable...maybe not.
regards
Track record is always important.
Ever read "The Black Swan" by Taleb?
If you are a Turkey in the US in October, you can induce from the Track Record of the farmer, that life is going to be sweet all the way through Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Being lazy I'll quote from the wikipedia entry for "The Black Swan" by Taleb
The book's position is that a Black Swan event depends on the observer—using a simple example, what may be a Black Swan surprise for a turkey is not a Black Swan surprise for its butcher—hence the objective should be to "avoid being the turkey" by identifying areas of vulnerability in order to "turn the Black Swans white".
And seeing that you have pointed out that Track Record is important. Jeremy Grantham has had a pretty good track record as an investor.
It would appear that Jeremy Grantham is lining up with a resource depletion view of the world and has been labelled as a neo-Malthusian...
Grantham's view can be seen at http://au.businessinsider.com/were-headed-for-a-disaster-of-biblical-pr…
Summary of the Summary
The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behaviour to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.
Summary
Until about 1800, our species had no safety margin and lived, like other animals, up to the limit of the food supply, ebbing and flowing in population.
From about 1800 on the use of hydrocarbons allowed for an explosion in energy use, in food supply, and, through the creation of surpluses, a dramatic increase in wealth and scientific progress.
Since 1800, the population has surged from 800 million to 7 billion, on its way to an estimated 8 billion, at minimum.
The rise in population, the 10-fold increase in wealth in developed countries, and the current explosive growth in developing countries have eaten rapidly into our finite resources of hydrocarbons and metals, fertiliser, available land, and water.
Now, despite a massive increase in fertiliser use, the growth in crop yields per acre has declined from 3.5% in the 1960s to 1.2% today. There is little productive new land to bring on and, as people get richer, they eat more grain-intensive meat. Because the population continues to grow at over 1%, there is little safety margin.
The problems of compounding growth in the face of finite resources are not easily understood by optimistic, short-term-oriented, and relatively innumerate humans (especially the political variety).
The fact is that no compound growth is sustainable. If we maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything and crash. We must substitute qualitative growth for quantitative growth.
But Mrs. Market is helping, and right now she is sending us the Mother of all price signals. The prices of all important commodities except oil declined for 100 years until 2002, by an average of 70%. From 2002 until now, this entire decline was erased by a bigger price surge than occurred during World War II.
Statistically, most commodities are now so far away from their former downward trend that it makes it very probable that the old trend has changed -- that there is in fact a Paradigm Shift -- perhaps the most important economic event since the Industrial Revolution.
Climate change is associated with weather instability, but the last year was exceptionally bad. Near term it will surely get less bad.
Excellent long-term investment opportunities in resources and resource efficiency are compromised by the high chance of an improvement in weather next year and by the possibility that China may stumble.
From now on, price pressure and shortages of resources will be a permanent feature of our lives. This will increasingly slow down the growth rate of the developed and developing world and put a severe burden on poor countries.
We all need to develop serious resource plans, particularly energy policies. There is little time to waste.
So handing incumbent owners of greenfields land a 6000% capital gain, and forcing the price of all houses up, has "what" to do with the correct policy responses to potential resource runout?
There is nothing more intellectually incoherent than advocating a "CBD employment" and "apartment block residences" policy response to a post-resources future. The lifestyle block survivalists are much more convincing people. PDK is one himself, yet unlike other such people I have met, instead of telling us all to adapt like he actually HAS, he smokescreens furiously in favour of Len Brown, Inc, and the racket in economic land rent, on this forum.
PDK has NEVER credibly explained this contradiction in his position. As I have suggested before, possibly PDK and his mate Len Brown are acting like the Pharisees in the Gospels - or perhaps the pigs in "Animal Farm", or the Nomenklatura in the Communist system: lifestyle block living for me (on which I will survive the post-resource ecopalypse) and high-density apartment living for thee (in which thou shalt starve to death in the post-resource ecopalypse).
If I were the forum's moderators, I would have been deleting PDK's irrelevant subject-changing whenever the land rent racket comes up, long since, and threatening a permanent ban if his forum-devaluing trolling continued. There are other sites that are dedicated to "peak oil" and "global warming" and the ecopalypse generally, and to "Green" politics; and the fact that PDK does not hang out there rather than here, suggests to me that the moderators of those forums wisely regard him as such an embarrassment that he is actually not welcome there.
I know of no other forum allegedly expert in and dedicated to finance and economics, whose moderators have been such failures at policing the quality of discussion on their forum. Specialist forums like these SHOULD be capable of rising to the level of academic peer-to-peer discussion when specialties like land economics come up for discussion; and many such forums DO.
One site I frequent has dedicated a "forum" to specific popular side issues, and at the first sign of diversion on a new regular discussion thread, the moderator moves the diversionary comments off it to the relevant forum section, and the discussion on the thread can proceed sensibly on the subject the thread is meant to be about. Interest.Co.NZ needs a "forum" like this; one of the pages on it could be devoted to "the second law of thermodynamics" and every second comment made by PDK on threads that are meant to be about land economics, or monetary policy, or overseas trade and tariffs, or whatever, could be deleted and moved to that forum page.
People who want to know about the second law of thermodynamics can go to that page on the site, and people who want to know about finance and economics can stick to the main blog threads and actually learn what they went there for (and contribute to the discussion) without having to wade through a whole lot of irrelevant stuff and possibly give up in the process and never bother to come back to interest.co.nz again.
I can see when oh-so-convenient excuses are being made for a deeply corrupt racket that does nothing to address the alleged underlying problem. I respect the ACTIONS of people like PDK in response to the alleged problem. All I ask is a little reciprocal respect to those of us who actually understand economics and land markets, and we can arrive at beneficial policy recommendations.
I say, along with pretty much all the world's land economists; you want to reduce resource use, tax resource use. Running a racket in urban land is pointless, destructive, has massive deadweight costs, has unintended consequences, and fails to address the problem. One of the most pithy quotes on the subject is from Anthony Downs: trying to address resource consumption by mandating urban form, is like trying to adjust the position of a picture on a wall by moving the house rather than the picture. If you don't get it, taxing resource use is like being intelligent enough to just shift the picture..........
but you show no understanding of economics, maths, science, engineering. So great you are a now a self appointed land economist....or more like a libertarian pushing an agenda that will make things no better and in fact worse....someone who changes the goal post to suit just as long as the end result is the same.
regards
but you show no understanding of economics, maths, science, engineering. So great you are a now a self appointed land economist....or more like a libertarian pushing an agenda that will make things no better and in fact worse....someone who changes the goal post to suit just as long as the end result is the same.
regards
Im curious who the luddites are? and what new machinery they are protesting about? is that the things in your head that havnt been invented yet by ppl that can do math?
malthusian, I take it thats anyone who can do math?
Since you are depressed, see a doctor, I think its called prozac ask, for a bucket.
regards
We could start with the Luddites who oppose nuclear and hydro at the same time as alleging that we need to reduce fossil fuel use........
A Malthusian is someone who does the wrong math, and assumes that nothing can keep up with population growth - food production, energy, raw resources, technological progress, whatever. They have always been wrong, and remember on your death bed, PhilBest predicted that you would die without seeing the resource runout and collapse of global capitalism you pined for all your life, just as all Malthusians before you have died disappointed.
Another name for them is "hyper-linear thinkers".
It is not us optimists who are the ones who need Prozac.
But we have been over this argument again and again and again, and I want this site to provide a separate forum that these pointless diversions from the real subject at hand can be cut-and-pasted to by the moderators.
And as I have said before, what am I to suppose your real motives are in being a useful idiot defender of the land racket for completely pointless pretexts? I really wonder whether you and PDK actually believe the stuff you endlessly recycle to divert attention from that.
A luddite is someone who rejetcs a piece of technology in oder to protect their vested intrest. A nimby would I suspect be more appropriate in terms of dams.
Mathulsian is actually sound maths finite does not fit into infinite, its a known that at some point the extraction/expansion will decline or cease....The only unknown is, when.
I'll take that pediction....assuming I dont get squahed by a truck tomorrow.......all else being equal I think we have at most 3~5 years before we'll see all oil output drop.
What you want is doesnt matter, it isnt your site...by al means publish your own libertarian website and ban me and anyoe else whos viewpoint you dont like...
Reducing yourself to insults yet again it seems, sorry but history is proving you wrong as its being written.
regards
I want this site to provide a separate forum that these pointless diversions
Yah. Me to.
I would like this site to be like a number of other sites and be able to have an "ignore user" function.
interest.co.nz, from a forum/discussion viewpoint, is in need of an upgrade
Glad you agree. But having a separate forum and bumping thread-hijacking comments off to it, is better than an "ignore user" function, because the owners of the site know what they want their site, and each thread they start, to be ABOUT. And they know what casual visitors to the site will be coming there for, and they know that the topic each thread is devoted to in the first place, is what those casual visitors are interested in.
I have a problem with someone who disapears from this site for months at a time and then when he returns with all his arrogance and know it all attitude he thinks he can dictate what sort of debate occurs here.
Philbest when push comes to shove your libertarian beliefs are thrown out the window in favour something more dictatorial.
I say let everyone have their say even if you don't believe in what they say.
Hi Brendon – I don’t think PhilBest is trying to restrict comment, just suggesting it should be more relevant to the topic. There are plenty of other pages you can go to on interest.co.nz to comment on Currencies, KiwiSaver for example, and of course there are many other specialist sites out there. Whatever site or specialist page you go to, you would expect the posts to be relevant to the title.
Irrespective of anyone’s beliefs on peak oil etc., I don’t see how the posts by PDK et al provide a short, medium or even long term solution to housing affordability when they think we are all doomed no matter what we do.
I have yet to hear a workable solution from PDK that does not involve immediately reducing the world’s population by 2/3rds and the rest of us (of course I’m assuming that anyone reading this will be part of the lucky 1/3rd who survive) living on a self-sufficient lifestyle block, to be all connected via the internet so we can share our views on sites, no matter how relevant to the topic. What do you think the chances are of that happening?
This type of view gives no hope to those that aspire to a better way, of which affordable housing is on their wish list. This damned if we do, damned if we don’t thinking, makes people want to party like there is no tomorrow, which makes PDK’s future prediction more likely to come true. A self-fulfilling prophesy?
Even if PDK is proven right in the future (near or far), or we are wiped out by a natural disaster (which is probably more likely to happen first), we should at least provide housing in the most affordable way possible. This will at least make people slightly happier in their PDK predicted misery.
Thanks, Dale.
Brendon, I am not anti free speech. The internet provides everyone with forums for whatever they want to air their views on. I am trying to encourage Interest.co.nz to exercise their property rights a bit more sensibly - like a restaurateur could be encouraged to remove drunken and abusive guests for the sake of his own ongoing business viability, by customers who would quite like to eat and drink there more regularly.
If a troll was hitting every thread at Interest.Co.NZ with comments linking housing unaffordability to "women being out of their place" or something equally remote from the relevant factors but about which they had an obsession, the moderators would presumably run out of patience and the troll would be banned.
I am saying that the obsession that the earth is running out of resources, is just as irrelevant to discussions of economic rent and wealth transfers, which require a modicum of understanding of economics to be able to participate meaningfully. If you were a misogynistic member of the Taliban wanting to blame everything in the West on "women being out of their place", and knew nothing about economics, you would be about as relevant on this forum as PDK, who wants to blame everything in the here and now, including past economic cyclical volatility, on some runout of resources that might take place in 2030 or something.
And furthermore, he seems to want to offer actually-irrelevant pretexts for wealth transfers, or I rather think he is incapable of understanding at all any explanation of their existence or occurrence - just as the misogynistic Talebanite would continue to exist that everything is going to hell in a handcart because of his pet bugaboo, while being incapable of grasping the relevant economics.
And to top it all off, PDK himself lives on a lifestyle block, which is like the aforesaid hypothetical Talebanite being a member of a "free love society" at the same time as insisting that the traditional patriarchical family is the answer to all societal ills.
I see your point. I have the hope of achieving some common ground... Probably a misguided hope on my part.
And I have been a little inconsistent with my tolerance of others viewpoints. I accept some who I judge to be honestly attempting to deal with big issues as is their right in a democratically run country. But I had a real problem with Lowell Manning's article because he is a trained economist who is ignoring evidence which he must be aware of. That would be like a Doctor writing about a particular illness saying we just have to accept it, even though in parts of the US the incidence of the illness had been reduced by half, by utilising a particular treatment strategy. And the Doctor was ignoring a major NZ study on this issue which in its latest survey had its introduction written by the Minister of Health.
We wouldn't accept this sort of quackery in health care but seem to accept it in economics.
Hugh has explained again and again which international agencies regard the median multiple as a credible measure of housing affordability.
Is there a different measure that you prefer? I can assure you there are a lot of incredible B.S. ones out there that serve the big property/big finance vested interests very nicely if you want to be their sucker/useful idiot.
Unfortunately this forum does very little to discuss and expose this sort of thing.
Personally, I think a few minutes on any Real Estate site in any one of around 150 cities in the US is sufficient to tell any Kiwi with half a brain that young folk and renters and as-yet-home-owners are being ripped off blind by the urban land rent racket. I already gave you a link to a number of examples from Austin, Texas. But there are dozens of other cities that would serve just as well.
You're a bright lad - why don't you look at the evidence and get angry? And tell all your mates to get angry too?
Scarfie the 3 to 1 ratio does seem to be a good indicator of "fair value" and I think we are in a 2x bubble...maybe more just in a business as usual context. ( ie ignoring peak oil impacts, BB retiring impacts, debt imacts etc) HugeP of course is taking it out of context...thats par for HughP.
There is a saying "never argue with a fool, ppl may not know the difference", I'd encompass HughP and similar with political baggage in that.
regards
".........the 3 to 1 ratio does seem to be a good indicator of "fair value" and I think we are in a 2x bubble...."
That's a helpful admission, Steven. So what is your "context" that justifies a 2X bubble?
Have you ever learned anything from the facts I have re-run again and again for you - that within the USA, everyone had access to the same low interest rates, the same loose credit, the same mortgage interest tax deductions, the same petrol prices, the same demographics, whatever - and the cities without growth containment policies had steady median multiples of around 3, while those with growth containment policies had the price bubbles.
Furthermore, there is no correlation between the presence or absence of growth constraints, and infrastructure costs/local fiscal crises; or with traffic congestion; or with commute to work times. The "pain" of the 2X and 3X price inflation in housing, has NO "gain" to weigh against it.
I have further predictions to make that I want you to remember; no matter how high fossil fuel prices go, these affordable cities local economies will suffer LESS than those of the inflated house price cities where the "planning" that caused the unaffordability has allegedly been to "future proof" their local economy.
Interesting, according to the reader poll the most popular option at 28% is to limit population growth (by sending immigrants elsewhere). Yet the less popular options, higher density living (at 20%) and re-defining Auckland to cover a larger portion of the country (at 16%) seem to be the most discussed options.
Take a look at “The Woodlands” near Houston, to see what can be done in a genuine free market for urban development.
Affordable housing of high quality on large sections. Plenty of green space and public amenity. Jobs-housing balance. 150,000 new residents in 10 years.
This is what you can DO when the land cost $10,000 per acre or less, instead of $1,000,000 per acre or more. That leaves quite a lot of difference able to be spent on actual buildings or sacrificed to green space or wide roads or footpaths or bike tracks or schools or sports fields or whatever.
There is room for a few dozen of these between Dorkland and Hamilton.
There's your "send growth elsewhere" popular option fulfilled.
As I repeatedly point out to you; urban form like "The Woodlands" and Houston, has high jobs-housing balance and minimal "pricing out" effect in any one Real Estate location. Therefore, younger-household residents of these cities, UNLIKE DORKLAND, do NOT have to buy a house 100 kilometers away from work because it is all they can afford.....!!!!
Average trip to work times in Dorkland, and even more terminally stupid Wellington, are WORSE than Houston, which has 5 million people.....!!! Or even than LA, which BTW is twice as dense as most other US cities and has unaffordable housing (due to anti growth policies), so is not one of my preferred models to emulate.
"Model city" Vancouver has WORSE commute to work times. So does "model city" London. So does almost every city in the UK, in spite of far smaller size, stuffed economies, and low economic productivity. The reason is always the "pricing out" effect, and higher traffic congestion due to density.
Look on it as "13 posts in 1 week". How many posts have Steven and PDK made in the last week? How many times as many comments as me, have they made in the last year?
And am I not entitled to reply to criticisms of my comments?
The focus of discussion on this site is so warped it is a joke. People like me who want to advance the core purpose of the site, and discuss the intricacies of land economics, land rent, and academic literature on the subject, so we understand housing affordability better, are sneered at as irrelevant and told we are overdoing the postings......!
Hijackers who turn every thread into a resource doomsayer's "the end is nigh" sandwich board are apparently the main reason the whole forum exists.....? And responding to their pronouncements from on high in the Temple of Gaia is sacriledge?
It's your funeral, Chaston, Hickey, Tarrant, et al, if this is how you want your forum to end up.
What if the people living in The Woodlands were also to work in The Woodlands? Then there is isn't the fossil fuel/commuting problem.
I only briefly looked over The Woodlands website (can't view it properly from this computer but I'll hopefully look closer at it later), but surely smaller cities are the way of an energy constrained future?
If we had many more but smalelr cities, and people worked in the citiy they lived in, would that not be better than Auckland growing even more? If cities were only so large as to be completely covered by cycling I think that could be a large improvement.
That is the point exactly, and also, that jobs-housing balance has indeed resulted in the USA's cities having the LEAST traffic congestion and the shortest average commute-to-work trip times.
NZ's Councils have been keeping the facts under wraps, but the cat is out of the bag now due to analyses of GPS data:
http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/congestionindex/
NZ and Australia have the WORST traffic congestion delays, compared to the UK, which is worse than Europe, which is worse than the USA.
International "commute to work" averages can be compared from appendix “Table 8” beginning on page 36 of this paper:
http://www.fcpp.org/files/1/PS135_Transit_MY15F3.pdf
The myth of the "traffic jam hell" US city is a false one. The freer the urban land market is, the more that employment and workforces "sort" towards efficient locations relative to each other. The "urban hell" is actually the cities like NZ's and Australia's and the UK's, where road infrastructure has been starved of funding, house prices driven up and young people forced into massive long commutes from rural areas, and massive wastage on public transport subsidies that prop up CBD's which do not create the wealth in the economy while not doing a thing to help the wealth-producing, blue-collar part of the economy.....
"......These movements would have their reflection in the price of land.......In net effect, the subsidies on rail and subway transport are subsidies to the owners of certain types of land - for which there is no social justification......" It is starting to be observed in some literature relating to cities, that lower paid jobs in very-high-value inner cities are increasingly being taken by immigrants from the third world, who are prepared to tolerate the overcrowding necessary to get accommodated affordably within travel distance of those jobs. The question is increasingly being raised, about the social justice inherent in subsidies to commuter rail systems such as Manhattan's, disproportionately benefiting the highest income earning quartile with subsidised costs of transport. Ross Elliott from Brisbane, Australia, whose insight I greatly respect, has pointedly raised this question about Australian cities: http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/05/no-the-cbd-is-not-the-driver-of-jobs-part-4/ (There are links from that article, to all of Ross's series of essays on the subject).
My dad is trying to submit his feedback on Unitary Plan. He's been trying for days.. everytime he clicked submit, he gets and error message. I tried on his behalf and got the same error. Now we know why Auckland Counsil only got 3000 submissions.. yes I have logged a help call with the council and no one got back to us.
LMAO Count. Dotcom is just as fine a citizen as any of them so might as well. One thing I called and got right was the dodgy warrant by the FBI, could always see a judge flipping that one in the end.
Agree about Williamson, but he did help friends over an issue and he was quite effective on that occasion. Would have been scary to have the yes man as the mayor though.
Scarfie, I just want you to know that I am with you as far as I see Dotcom as an honourable threat to the oligopolistic behaviour of the "big music" industry. This is why he was shut down, wasn't it? Basically giving the recording artists a much fairer deal than they'd get elsewhere?
Yes intellectual property rights are an interesting one and a good analysis of the process could lead to the conclusion that it is anti-social. It permits the centralisation of profits rather than the property being out there for the good of the whole community. Interesting because I am in the process myself :-)
My greater fear though was the challenge to the already tenuous link between the name and function of the Justice System.
Mayor Len Brown’s definition of affordability is to make houses smaller (but will still be dearer on a dollar per m2 basis) and making developers subsidise a small number of houses through inclusionary zoning which means making the rest of housing dearer. Inclusionary zone housing will require council, or quasi-council organisations to ‘manage’ the process of who qualifies, after all this makes sense as who can manage our money better than council?
Following the trend of housing becoming less affordable, and Mayor Brown’s logic, he will have to make developers build smaller and smaller inclusionary zoning housing as time goes on. The end result being we will all qualify for ‘affordable’ housing. This seems all too easy – there must be a catch.
If you read my article on the Auckland Unitary Plan, you will know that I see it as a revenue producing mechanism. By its own words it admits this, and by default it is impossible for housing to become truly affordable (unless it is caused by some arm’s length financial disaster, GFC 2 anyone, which I’m sure some political parties are hoping for) under the present system and proposed Auckland Unitary Plan. Any increase in council housing revenue is an increase in purchaser costs (passed on by the developer). Putting aside any high density vs low density argument, all non-value added costs need to be removed. This includes land ‘up lift zoning’ price increases, bureaucratic council costs including many of the components of development levies and inclusionary zoning, plus time and money delays that prevent being able to build at the rate of demand ( see interest.co.nz article No fix for Auckland housing till 2028). Others have posted about how some will lose out if these non-value-added costs are removed, as a defence why we should not make housing affordable (without subsidy). This is like defending people’s right to eat to excess, at the expense of feeding the starving. Auckland City Council is getting fat on the bones of their ratepayers.
What a load of bollocks.
"In developed countries, the replacement rate birth rate is two point one children per woman. This will keep the population stable".http://www.vhemt.org/pop101-2.htm
So if we can encourage fertility rates around this number and discourage immigration (domestic and int'l) into Auckland we are home and hosed. I don't know many families who have more than 2 children.
Len Brown seems determined that we have to have a bigger city and while he might have a cunning plan to house us all in cages (don't mention this to Eddie Mcguire http://www.smh.com.au/national/eddie-everywhere-comes-a-cropper--again-20130531-2nh5u.html) I have yet to see a convincing augument that transport, education and health will manage.
We need to stop kidding ourselves. Our future is dependent on our ability to convert rain to milk powder and large towns where the only real growth is building houses does not make us strong. At some pt the bubble will burst. - the only question as ever is when - no one is going to ring a bell at the top but people need to sleep at night. The GFC showed what happens to the first disposable properties on the list - holiday homes - they crashed. If the GFC had lengthened the next straw would have broken - peoples actual homes.
"The GFC isnt over btw..."
Sure it ain't. And the long depression of the 1880's is still simmering below the surface like an economic dose of herpes. Not to mention the housing bubble of 1971-74, that is about to burst any moment. I'm sure Cyclone Bola blew my washing off the line the other day. Steven the GFC is just initials. It is a mythical beast like a taniwha, not a real being such as the Jolly Green Giant or Superman.
Hey is this really GBH after a sex change?
Funny thing about the 1880s, if you look at Hubbert's energy blip in terms of human existance, its a massive blip, or if you want a one off bubble, caused by a one time energy use.
Now sure keep on gambling in there because the longer you do the longer the game continues and the less debt I'll have...
regards
Thanks Hugh; I have made some comments on that thread; which I regard, along with numerous other topic posts there over the last few days, as very high quality investigative journalism on this subject and well worth supporting with patronage of the site.
This one was outstanding:
SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT DEPRECIATION FOR LEN BROWNhttp://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2013/05/some-questions-about-depreciation-for-len-brown/
Leaves the so-called financial specialist reportage media for dead.
This one's good too.....
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2013/06/utopian-wonderland-madness/
"One would assume and hope that Auckland Council and it’s CCO’s would be unified and coordinated.
Well if you thought that you’d be wrong.
It’s reasonably well known that Resource Consent planners at Auckland don’t get along with Auckland Transport (AT) and more often than not engage external traffic consultants to liaise with AT because they are a difficult organisation staffed by lots of angry people.
Now AT has a team of Urban Designers (we don’t know why an organisation charged with maintaining black top roads needs an urban designer – I digress).
AT having urban designers has caused frustration and difficultly for the regular force urban designers at Auckland Council’s built environment department. Given the animosity between sister organisations – that’s no surprise.
Designing a utopian paradise is heavy work. The detail and thought that goes into each neighbourhood is substantial. Planning out where people will rest, how safety will be maintained and the way we will walk and skip and ride our bikes is – I am sure – a carefully considered exercise involving well honed skills.
Crayons and rainbows aside one would assume that all Urban Designers agree on what utopia is. In the same way planners and traffic engineers agree on structure, planning provisions and road layouts. It’s a learned objective approach.
But the AT utopian urban planners cannot agree with the built environment division urban designers of Auckland Council on a range of matters.
One recent rumour has Auckland Council built form urban designers in a fight to the death with Auckland Transport urban designers over how the roads and integrated form should be designed at Hobsonville point.
Firstly Hobsonville Point is the peripheral edge of nowhere (nobody gives a shit if it sucks or is amazing) and secondly this infighting is really the sort of immature carry on we would expect from a dozen catty girls arguing over who can use the curling irons. Get a grip!
One does wonder how Len lost control of his organisation. Any half decent leader would stamp out any nonsense before it became an embarrassing debacle or lost business revenue. Not Len and not at Auckland Council or its subsidiaries. They are hell bent on fighting like school yard girls over trinkets and rainbows and where you tie your unicorn up.
It’s madness.
At a time when Auckland Council needs uniformity, solidarity and professionalism it’s organisations are staffed by people who can’t even agree which crayon should be used to mark out active edges, built form and people movements. It’s beyond pathetic – it’s madness at it’s most complex form and you Mr and Mrs Ratepayer are paying for it.
Auckland Council is a complete mess. Like an acid trip in Vegas the Council is in a dreamy hallucination and like Medusas head the snakes Re spending more time biting each other than doing what is right for citizens of Auckland."
Somebody who knew I would be interested, just forwarded me this very interesting comment from a "lifestyle block advocate" in Vermont State, named Martin Harris.
"........ it’s long been known that a family on its own 5 or 10 acres can enjoy independence (see the many books, some USDA published, on this subject) and demand less remote-generated energy than a smart-growth tenement dweller like my grandfather in his Boston-area three-decker, from which he rode light rail (a street car) to and from his mill job six days a week. On my mini-farm I can have my own well water and sewage disposal, frequently both non-electric-powered; re-cycle my own table wastes in the garden and tree-thinnings in the wood furnace without need for municipal trucks and powered utility systems, and store re-cyclable spare parts for my ancient pick-up in a home-made shed.
With my 12 gauge at hand in my castle, I am immune to minor visiting urbanite misbehavior, but admittedly not to the mass mobs which will flee the cities when the delicately-balanced systems which now enable them inevitably break down for any of the usual reasons. Government won’t save me from them, which is why, I’d argue, gold is less useful than ammo, even though no one can have enough to prevent the Hobbesian end when urbanization collapses and the city folks go foraging across a non-urban countryside for all their perceived needs and entitlements......"
And see also:
http://www.farmingmagazine.com/print-3923.aspx
http://www.truenorthradio.com/editorials/editorial_12_07c_10.shtml
"..... Left-Brainers in general seem to prefer larger lots (so do serious-enviro grow-your-own types, interestingly) and Right-Brainers in general don’t. Left-Brainers, in general, can co-exist with smart-growthers, but the reverse isn’t true: the smart-growth movement seeks legislative-governance police power to forbid the large-lot choice, and its no-growth component uses its skills at zoning hearings to prevent construction where possible....."
He sounds like a more broad-minded and intellectually consistent version of PDK.......
Hang on. That article is about (Daily Mail's ability to correctly report research aside) women in million pound houses with husbands with six figure incomes. Whatever the problems of being rich and bored, high density housing is not one of them.
Looking it up the population density in Knightsbridge (the first area mentioned) is well below other areas of London where there is much less booze and depression.
Black n Blue Gonzo...? no , a real shade of jaundice has overtaken him for merely persuing closer relations with ethnic advisors.....wonder if we could see that artists depiction of the CBD done for Lenny the legover during the high rise debate, spoke volumes about his desire for a more.. cultural blend..?..ha ha..! anyhoo ya gotta wonder where he got his rash from in the first place ..uh.? I mean he not being very candida about that now is he...deary me, and just for a lousy couch trip...obviously not the type to clear the in tray and do it like a man.
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