Prime Minister Bill English today told us that our housing affordability crisis “is fundamentally a product of poorly-directed…views about the environment”. He is simply wrong, utterly unconvincing and has his head firmly in the sand.

Aucklanders know what has driven house prices in their city to ludicrous levels. Uncontrolled immigration, unmitigated speculation and a government unwilling to face reality and do anything about it. Instead they have opined lack of supply and used the situation as an opportunity to constantly attack the RMA and local councils – all the while doing nothing about the underlying driver of the problem. Of course supply is an issue, but it is only so because of the excess demand. Demand fueled by both foreign speculators and plenty of local ones as well.

There are plenty of things they could have done do to address demand (refer “Eight steps to stabilising the Auckland housing market“) but instead any action they have taken in that space has always been too little too late. So now we have the problem spreading across New Zealand whilst Auckland sways on the edge of a a major market correction.

In the face of his government’s inaction for the last six years English’s concern about the impact of housing costs on low income families rings hollow. He argues that we can’t expect those households “to carry the burden of arbitrary preferences exercised by people having a view about amenity value that can include everything from furniture layouts in houses that haven’t been built, through to positioning of plants on a section.”

Does he really think this is the problem? If he had visited some auction rooms in Auckland over the last few years he may have got a proper grip on reality.

Ewen McQueen
February 2017