Tim Walker’s Building

Affordable housing in Auckland.

Sorry, allow me to rephrase. Affordable housing in Auckland?

Prices in the Auckland housing market have been inexorably climbing for years. They long ago surpassed that of any other New Zealand city and now, are beyond ridiculous. The reason for it is simple: too much demand, not enough supply. The Government, around the last election, stepped up claiming that it would introduce a range of basic, low cost, ‘affordable housing’ for low income New Zealanders…

Under this plan a single bedroom abode would cost a destitute Auckland family $350 thousand; although on account of increased building costs this total is now more like $400 grand. That’s for a single. A three bedroom house which, let’s be fair, if they have five kids, is more like what they’ll need, will cost a low income family $450 – $500 thousand.

Affordable housing in Auckland. It’s an oxymoron. I bought my three bedroom house in rural Mid Canterbury a few years back for $131 grand. A three bedroom house in Otago nowadays can still go for under $130 grand – in Bluff, under 100.

The easiest solution as I see it is of course, to blame the Government. It’s the Government’s fault that everybody wants to live in Auckland; it’s the Government’s fault that the nation seems to believe all the jobs are in Auckland. It’s the Government’s fault that the majority of NZ’s population already live in Auckland and it is therefore the Government who is to blame for not magically making land or, more to the point, houses appear – cheap houses at that.

Is it a crisis? I wouldn’t say so. If Auckland want to pack themselves into the upper third of the nation then bitch and moan about how tight it is, surely, that’s their prerogative.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Liv Inner

Photography A Boad

 

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