Try on current proposed provisions 316,000 (approximate) short

Finally the updated Residential Capacity Model has come out for submitters to use in their Hearings, and for the Unitary Plan Panel to consider in their recommendations next year.

I have the expert conference report below and will upload more material later next week.

In short the Unitary Plan is meant to enable some 400,000 dwellings on a 60% intensification, 40% Greenfield split through to 2041 as per the Auckland Plan. That means at minimum 240,000 residential dwellings need to be built in the existing urban area of Auckland (so Brownfield development).

Problem?

This:

The initial output of the ACDC15 development feasible dwellings, which total 64,420, or 20% of the CfGS13 (published) dwellings and 11.4% of the ACDC15 plan-enabled. If we were to add the 19,000 HNZC dwellings (conservative) that the PAUP allows, this would provide a total developable feasible dwelling number of 83,420 or 26% of the reported CfGS13 plan enabled.

…..

Council reruns the ACDC15 models and finds with alterations to the Unitary Plan more housing becomes viable to build

I was wondering when Auckland Council would rerun the Development Capacity Model through different scenarios of the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan given the first attempt was pretty much a failure (see: Unitary Plan Falls Very Short of Enabling Those 400,000 Homes Needed by 2041).

From Auckland Council:

New model shows increase in number of houses possible under Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan.

Auckland Council has used the new Development Capacity Model to reveal how many houses could be built under the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (PAUP).

The Development Capacity model was developed by a group of independent experts at the request of the Panel who wanted to understand how much of the housing growth enabled by the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan could be actually developed in today’s market.

In July the Panel released data which had been generated by this new model. That data indicated that a total of  64,400 houses (excluding Housing NZ properties) would be commercially feasible to build under today’s market conditions when the Unitary Plan became operative in 2016.

Since receiving the data, the council has re-run the model inputting the suggested changes to the residential zone provisions so as to understand what impact those changes may have on that number of feasible houses.

The results have revealed that the suggested changes to the residential provisions of the PAUP have resulted in more houses being feasible than previously thought.

The key results are that the changes have resulted in a 56% increase in plan enabled dwellings and a 140% increase in dwellings commercially feasible. This means the number of dwellings that are commercially feasible today stands at 154,000 (excluding Housing New Zealand properties).

Unitary Plan Hearings Panel Directs Council to rerun and peer review Auckland Council Development Capacity 2015 Model AGAIN!

The issue of how much existing urban Auckland can take in extra housing (Brownfield development and/or intensification) is becoming vexed to the point of rather ridiculous.

While I am preparing for Council’s Rebuttal Evidence that is due on October 6 (the Hearings are a week after that) on the Residential Zones I noticed this Directive from Judge Kirkpatrick of the Hearing Panel to Council (and two others) on the Auckland Council Development Capacity Model (ACDC15) for those Residential Zones.

Here is the Directive: (Click link below)

Auckland 2040 Not Happy with ACDC15 Directive

This morning I blogged on the Directive the Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel issued on doing a third run of the Auckland Council Development Capacity Model (ACDC15) for the Unitary Plan Residential Zones (see: #UnitaryPlan: Oh Council Wont Like This With the Development Capacity Model Being “Pinged”)

In that post I wrote:

Rather ouch to Council as their re-run of the ACDC15 model in which they were pinning on would show the market feasible would increase from the initial 11% to over 60%. But it seems the Panel is not convinced thus the directive issued above that is going to have implications on the proposed controls for the Residential Zones and later on Topic 081 which is the rezoning exercise.

I am going to take a hunch that what the proposed development controls are for the Residential Zones in the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (density controls removed and height limits increased) are fine (unlike the Centres Zones) but where the respective zones are placed will be causing the major issues.

It might be a case of once the Residential Zones hearing is complete next month that initial runs on moving the zones around might need to be done to see how the development feasibility ends up. Of course legally this would open up the Rezoning exercise of Topic 081 for public submissions again to allow natural justice to occur. Just maybe this needs to be done and the Hearings extended six months beyond the nominal time frame of July 2016 to ensure everything to do with the Residential Zones and their spatial placement is correct.

Will see how Council reacts to the Panel Directive this week.

………………..

Well for the most I was right with what I said above, it is that Auckland 2040 reacted to the Directive first before Council did.

Auckland 2040’s Richard Burton sent a memo to the Panel this morning outlying his concerns.