After six years of housing delay, a call for more housing delay

At Auckland Council, compromise only really comes from one side of the housing debate.

A heavy fug of weariness hung over Auckland’s councillors as they worked to pass the latest iteration of their housing plan. “I’m tired,” said Albany representative Victoria Short. “Something I share with Aucklanders is that I’m tired,” said Waitākere’s Shane Henderson. “We’re here at the end of a long, hard five years,” said planning committee chair Richard Hills, with a slight sigh.

Hills was wrong. It’s actually been six years. The government delivered its first intensification directive, the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, in 2020. That was superseded by an even more pro-upzoning bipartisan townhouse law in 2021. Since then it’s been a series of walkbacks, backtracks and flip-flops. The government has made so many U-turns it’s rotated 540°, dropping Auckland’s housing capacity target from two million to 1.6 million to 1.4 million.

At each waterdown, pro-housing councillors have cajoled and negotiated with councillors who want as little housing as possible. They came to Tuesday’s meeting bearing another compromise: a plan that mixed the innovatively named Scenario A plan, which delivers the bare minimum number of houses the government now mandates, with the slightly more enthusiastic and equally catchily titled Scenario B plan, which would allow a larger capacity of around 1.6 million homes. At the end of six long, hard years, Scenario AB represented a path forward.

They may well have asked themselves what was the point? As soon as they tabled their new plan to delete apartments in smaller local centres like Blockhouse Bay while keeping them along frequent bus routes and near train stations, they were met with a call for more delay. Waitematā councillor Mike Lee put forward an amendment to put the latest plan on pause. His argument was essentially that because he and his similarly apartment-averse allies across Auckland had managed to delay this bit of government-enforced upzoning for so long, another piece of government-enforced upzoning was now so close at hand that passing this plan was futile.

Lee said a planned overhaul of the Resource Management Act, set for the latter part of this decade, was such a major change that the council shouldn’t bother making a more minor change now. He wanted to ask the government to let the council put things on hold until then.

Though his reasoning was practical and procedural, his speech was anything but. Lee railed against new apartments near the city centre, saying they would be the “luxury” preserve of the “super-rich”. He argued this entire plan was aimed at allowing developers to build in places with “harbour views”. He lamented the “destruction” of places like St Mary’s Bay and said the suburb, where houses cost $2.475 million on average, shouldn’t be the domain of the wealthy.

Lee described his amendment as an effort to “put people out of their agony”. Sceptics might see it as an effort to prolong it. For housing opponents, it would mean three more years with the townhouse of Damocles hanging over their heads. For developers, it would mean three more years of uncertainty. For pro-housing groups, it would mean three more years of campaigning.

Other councillors responded, to paraphrase: “wtf”. Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa’s Julie Fairy asked Lee what conversations he’d had with the government to suggest it would be amenable to putting its intensification directives on hold. None, he conceded. Whau representative Sarah Paterson-Hamlin listed the compromises she and others had been making to try to get their less density-friendly colleagues across the line. Henderson seemed slightly exasperated at living in what he saw as an upside-down world. He made the same argument as Lee from the opposite direction, saying inner suburbs were already the preserve of the rich. “Harbour views should not be restricted to people who were lucky enough and wealthy enough to be born at the right time.”

Lee’s amendment was voted down 16 votes to seven. Immediately afterward, North Shore councillor John Gillon made his own attempt to slow the march of housing progress. He lodged an amendment to discard Scenario AB and revert back to Scenario A, cutting off density along frequent bus routes near Birkenhead and Mt Eden and by train stations in places like Epsom. 

Not really relevant but please take a moment to look at Maurice Williamson’s luscious beard.

Gillon described his amendment as the “compromise solution”. But his opponents noted that it would discard much of the feedback from local boards and iwi, which argued for a blend of Scenarios A and B. Even Gillon’s own local board – Kaipātiki – had advocated for elements of Scenario B, including more housing along the Onewa and Glenfield Rd bus corridors, while the Devonport-Takapuna board supported 15-storey development in Takapuna. Hills said nearly all of those groups had got what they wanted. “Assuming that A is what the majority want – it’s completely untrue,” he said. “We listened. We tried to compromise.”

The compromise was only coming from one direction. Mostly, anyway. In the end, Hills got his blended plan across the line thanks to the support of three former opponents who agreed to come to the table and negotiate. At the council’s last housing meeting on June 9, Manurewa-Papakura’s Daniel Newman had put forward a motion to send only Scenario A out for consultation. He and his ward mate Matt Winiata swung behind Scenario AB after securing an agreement to remove density from Clendon and a flood plain near the Drury train station. Deputy mayor Desley Simpson also switched her vote after getting a deal which reduced upzoning around Meadowbank train station while extending it along the Remuera Rd bus route.

Their votes might not have made for a stirring Facebook post after the meeting, but it showed what councillors can achieve when they commit to the nitty gritty of negotiation rather than just loudly and proudly saying no to almost everything. Gillon’s amendment was voted down. Hills and his allies got to speechify as their plan passed. “I’m proudly voting yes to this and voting yes in my backyard,” said Paterson-Hamlin. “This is the biggest city in Aotearoa. It’s not a museum.” 

They probably earned the victory lap. It’s been six long, hard years. Now their plan will go out to an Independent Hearings Panel for assessment before coming back to them for approval next year. It may be the watered down version of a watered down plan, but at least it’s something. In the end it’s compromise, rather than more delay, that might actually put us all out of our agony.

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