We need affordable housing in Auckland, not cheap housing

Earlier in the week, Bill English signaled plans for government intervention into the Auckland housing market. It appears the plan is for the government to become a provider of medium density, medium priced housing; both private sector and state owned. Whilst this might seem like a good thing, I’ve got to admit this has underlying concerns for me.

Buildings play a significant role in society impacting on our health, wellbeing, productivity, security to name just a few, which is why Hampton Jones believe in striving for “better buildings for better lives”.

We all want affordable housing, but what we don’t need is cheap housing.

Cheap housing comes with other costs such as:

• Longer term costs such as higher maintenance or replacement needs (cheap today and costly tomorrow)
• Less durable materials; the likes of which resulted in the leaky buildings crisis
• Materials and products that are not fit for purpose or up to the required standard

Also will we see procurement under typical government contracts? These are often onerous to suppliers and competitively tendered for work that may not been seen as desirable?

In an industry that is already stretched to breaking point in terms of availability of builders and trades this also raises concern around who will be doing this work and the quality.

For state owned housing the government would do well to consider alternative initiatives like;

• Partnering with Pre-fab or modular suppliers and providing them with security of tenure. Pre-fabricated and modular housing can bring economies of scale and efficiencies, and takes the burden of site based trades. But the set up and operation of plants is cost prohibitive without guaranteed income stream. Government can provide this.
• Government can also look at setting up and managing their own supply chain to manage the cost of materials and drive efficiencies.
• Typology design with pre-consent sign off for prefab buildings brings in further cost savings.
  
  

In reality there is no quick fix to address the wider housing affordability which has many influencing factors.

However with the right approach to government intervention and support I don’t see why we can’t achieve a proportion of sustainable good quality affordable housing.