I enjoy my home, others should be allowed to enjoy theirs too

I am going to post some pictures of what Rebekka and I were doing outside our home last weekend:

Preparing the edging. Box Hedging will go in between the new edge and the path

Front fence. The Lavender will be transplanted to the back with Box Hedging going along the front

Edging for the Box Hedging getting under way. Also in the background is the Natives corner

Roses Corner

Vegetable Garden, Citrus Trees, and the Dwarf Totara Tree where the Lavender will go

Strawberries and Boysenberries along the fence

THE HENS!

The property is on 510m2 with the house a 1970’s three bedroom wood and brick structure sitting on piles. The place is located in Papakura and zoned Mixed Housing Urban under the Proposed Unitary Plan. Papakura Metropolitan Centre and Takanini Village are five minutes away by car or 10 minutes walking at a brisk speed. Papakura Station is a six-minute car trip or a 12 minute walk while the motorway is 10 minutes away (Takanini Interchange). Manukau City Centre is 15 minutes by car but we can not get there by train until Auckland Transport pulls finger and builds the Manukau South Link, while the City Centre is 53 minutes by train (45 minutes when the electrics are on stream for the Southern Line). And finally the Rural Urban Boundary is about five minutes to the east meaning I do not have very far to go to access rural Auckland. Nor that far to access a very large park either which is a stone’s throw away from the house.

Overall a nice place to live and a place Rebekka and I call home – our first home!

The point? Rebekka and I made a conscious choice of where to live and we chose this place as our first home as it fitted the criteria of budget, and proximity to amenities such as a Metropolitan Centre (or Town Centre) and transport infrastructure. Using the affordability scale for when we both purchased the place at 4.1x the gross combined income. Mortgage repayments are not so easily calculated as we go revolving meaning we pay ahead of time compared to a table mortgage. Some especially in our generation (25-34) would consider us very fortunate giving the housing situation in Auckland.

And this is the point of the post. Rebekka and I get to enjoy our own property where we can sit on the lawn in Summer and relax from the hustle and bustle of the City. We chose a free-standing property however, if circumstances were different a terraced house or even an apartment would have been in the mix. However, the freestander fitted what we wanted so we went with it. We also have friends who have their own places (maybe different topology to us) as well across the City and we have friends who rent because of their choice. But we also have friends like other Aucklanders out there who rent because they can not afford to get their own place owing to the housing affordability situation. Now these people are realists have budgets and expectations to what they would like and where they would like to go. None of this Champaign tastes on Beer budget crap that sometimes can be seen and I have little time for if they are in that situation.

The problem though as we know is that housing affordability is off kilter with the affordability index pushing around 8.0 or critically unaffordable. 3.0 is deemed affordable with 4.0 okay but under some stress. The index measures house prices being so many times the total gross income of a household. So 3.0 means a house price is 3x the total annual gross income of the household wanting to purchase the property. For rent and mortgage repayments it should not go above 33% although you can get to 40% with good budgeting. Anything above that and the word material poverty will start getting touted.  That said those on a revolving mortgage make it a bit harder to calculate but if you are forecast to pay the mortgage off under a standard 30 year Table Mortgage term then you would be in the same boat as a person on the 33% mark mentioned earlier.

So again we are very fortunate to have our own place of choice but too many out there don’t. This is an issue and can undermine our society (even if we flip to pro rental like the EU) and cause some very deep schisms which we see play out in part in South Auckland and especially at the moment West Auckland (crime). Actually not can, IT IS ALREADY undermining our society and creating very deep schisms here in Auckland.

This is not the Auckland I want for my daughter, this is not the Auckland a lot of citizens want in the City. Action is needed but is seemed very muddled by both Council and Central Government.

The easiest solution to get the ball well on its way (but it is not the only solution, consider as part of a suite of solutions needed) is get that freer market going. That is the supply of the particular housing topology (whether freestanding, units, terraced or apartments) is provided to meet the demand of what the people are actually wanting (with reasonable actual expectations). For this to happen our zoning across the City needs to allow more intensified housing via more liberal usage of both the Mixed Housing Urban Zone, and the Terraced Housing and Apartment Zone especially on the Isthmus and when close to a Metropolitan Centre. Furthermore our development controls need to be stripped back as for every control in place is another added expense to a development. And every extra expense puts that house affordability just a little bit further out of range. The Auckland Design Manual, the Urban Design Protocol (about to go under a rewrite), and the Building Act are your backstops to prevent crap quality housing being provided – not excessive development controls. Keeping NIMBY’s at bay that seem to have a knack at holding up every single development (Grey Lynn and the Great North Road on Arch Hill seems to be good examples right now) would be a start as well. I do not have issues with outcomes such as the Environment Court decision around Milford Shopping Centre (to be discussed at the Auckland Development Committee on Thursday) but I do when we see Environment Court decisions such as the Bunnings Arch Hill situation and no doubt the Unitec housing proposal coming through as well.

Of course we have other considerations such as quality transport choice being available (so able to pick private, public or active transport rather freely if in urban Auckland) so you can get around the City (work and recreation) freely without having large portions of your income chewed up by transport costs. And finally the available of employment centres close by whether existing or to be developed like Takanini, and Drury South. As we saw in my Auckland’s Commuting Journeys – A Series. #Major non City Centre Employment Centres Overview if good employment centres are near by people will tend to commute to them rather than go cross City as we see with West Auckland.

I consider myself damn lucky to have a place I call home. A lot of Aucklanders are not in that same boat and as a result deep schisms are opening up which lead to deprivation and crime (as West Auckland is experiencing at the moment). We and this includes Governments at both Local and Central Level need to be a heck more proactive then what is coming through now (see: Queensland Gets It Right, Auckland Continues to Dither and Get it Wrong for more).

Thursday I present to the Auckland Development Committee where I will be touching on the above issues as well as others (Auckland Development Committee – October Agenda)