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Mike Hosking: Government still doesn't understand housing

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 21 Oct 2019, 3:30PM

Mike Hosking: Government still doesn't understand housing

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 21 Oct 2019, 3:30PM

As we wait for Megan Woods’ house building chart that was promised as part of the KiwiBuild relaunch, we sadly but perhaps predictably find more trouble in Christchurch.

The chart, of course, is nowhere to be seen, despite the promise it would be up and public in a month. And the reason for that will be like all the other things they said would happen but haven’t: They don’t do their homework, they don’t listen to sage advice, they are driven by a dangerous combination of naivety and arrogance.

In Christchurch there is a 900 home deal that’s struggling to shift houses. It’s a Fletchers/Crown collab, so far 170 odd apartments townhouses and terraces have been built, not even 20 per cent have been sold.

The reportage suggests there is such concern, changes are going to need to be made. The trouble the Government sadly has never understood about housing is that the market by in large takes care of itself. It is driven and run by professionals who give people what they want.

The Government decided for political purposes to invent a so called crisis, and having invented the crisis they foolishly thought that simply building boxes would solve it.

Housing is not a numbers game. There is way more subtlety, nuance and sophistication to it. Simply knocking up a house and then grabbing a young family and plonking them in it isn’t real.

And that is one of the major reasons why KiwiBuild didn’t work, and its why the same problems that sunk it still exist in Megan’s new world.

I was astonished last week watching another Minister, Jenny Salesa, wander around a pre0fab factory espousing the virtues of knock together housing as the future of our home production.

Housing is emotional, location is critical, size is important along of course with cost. The Government’s fixated with cost alone, they have commoditised the problem.

If we can produce a box that you can afford they think that is  all there is too it. Surely the fact the houses they have already built that haven’t sold, tells them all they need to know.

If the problem was simple math, why didn’t the supply get met by the so called demand?

Pre-fab housing in certain parts of the world, notably Germany, can be clever and efficient. But this is a country where the quarter acre and a bungalow is part of the psyche - even getting most of us to consider an apartment has taken years.

Living is a shipping container which is what a lot of pre-fabs basically are is not only not an answer, it certainly isn’t the future.

After all, not only don’t you have a crisis with queues of desperate people lined up to take anything with a roof. You are asking these people who are locked out of the market to actually pay for this stuff with their own money

These aren’t freebies, they’re not give aways , a sensible person and their money especially on deals worth hundreds of thousands  aren’t easily parted

We adjust our lives to our circumstances needs and of course desires. We have a vision for ourselves, and although most wont articulate it out loud, a factory built box isn’t it.

Until the Government get it, they’re going to have a lot of for sale signs and a massive political headache.

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