Some Relativity into How Much Land Needed for Labour’s Kiwi-Build #NZPols

Written by Ben Ross - Talking Auckland

Not that much land actually

 

With Labour’s state housing program receiving much attention today (for mainly the right reasons) and National’s eight years of doing nothing is receiving all the wrong attention Newshub trotted out a Tweet stating how much land 100,000 homes under Labour’s Kiwi-Build would need:

 

That measurement is a tad useless so I converted back to the universal metric of hectares.

This is what we get:

  • A rugby field is 7000m2 or 0.7ha
  • 2,410 fields is 1,687ha
  • In Auckland:
    • CBD 350ha
    • Transform Manukau 600ha (potential 15,000 homes)
    • Wesley College Special Housing Area 384ha yielding 4,500 homes
    • Manukau Special Housing Area 90ha yielding 900 homes
  • Total: 1,424ha

So 260ha short which is two thirds of a Wesley College SHA to bring up your 2,410 rugby fields.

 

Given Council is putting aside 11,000ha for 160,000 homes in Greenfield areas (let alone Brownfield intensification) Labour’s Kiwi-Build would only take up only 15% of what Council is putting aside in the Greenfields. Don’t forget Transform Manukau (so Brownfield) is 600ha on its own and can yield and optimum density 15,000 houses (that includes apartments).

 

In reality Labour are only scratching the surface with Kiwi-Build. Which is more than National playing Chicken Little 57 times over.

 

Manukau Transform Project area Source: Panuku Development Auckland
Manukau Transform Project area
Source: Panuku Development Auckland

 

 

 

 

3 thoughts on “Some Relativity into How Much Land Needed for Labour’s Kiwi-Build #NZPols”

  1. Eh, the lack of on-the-job training programs and apprenticeships for trades might also contribute to the problem of people not getting into trades, too. Employers in New Zealand are strangely reluctant to invest in training and development all over the economy, (with a few notable exceptions, you need to already be trained in a field before they’ll consider any further training) and are increasingly favouring a model of fixed-term contracts over permanent employment, and then whining that they can’t get enough skilled workers, and have to resort to immigration. Ummm…

    The lack of affordable housing isn’t simply down to a lack of builders though. The incentives are wrong for investors to build affordable homes, as the risks (outside of initial capital) are similar between building affordable and expensive homes, but expensive homes get bigger margins, so private builds focus on (relatively) expensive homes.

    There’s absolutely great room for some government programs that either directly build the homes, front up the capital provided the homes are sold at an affordable cost for the region, or simply subsidise the costs.

  2. The real issue is because our BS academic elitist system is geared to chern everyone out with a degree otherwise you are a failure we don’t have the young tradies moving through the system.

    You can have all the land in the world, if you don’t have enough builders it stays just land, and the private developers will outbid the Government for those contractors.

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