Queenstown Lakes District Mayor Vanessa van Uden has welcomed the Government’s decision to amend the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act to enter into a Housing Accord with the Queenstown Lakes District Council.

“While our District enjoys spectacular growth and is one of New Zealand’s most desirable places to live, this has come at the cost of a unique housing affordability challenge with a mortgage repayment for median-priced house being 93.9% of the median weekly take home pay.”

Mayor van Uden said that Queenstown’s property market was part of a national and international buyers’ market.

“Approximately half of our property owners live outside the District and our huge appeal as a destination creates an affordability problem for the local community that the Council is committed to working with the Government to improve.”

In recent years the Council had tried to address the issue through steps including the establishment of a community housing trust to provide affordable houses to low and medium income families and a change to the District Plan, which allowed the Council to have favourable regard to developments which included provision for residential dwelling to local workers as part of a wider development.

“While these and other steps have been important, there is still not enough residential land coming into the market for development,” Mayor van Uden said. “The mechanisms available under this Act have the potential to increase the housing supply and, in turn, reduce the cost of houses.”

ENDS

Contact Chief Executive Adam Feeley for further comment, 03 441 0499

 

Further Information:

What is a housing accord?

Housing accords provide the basis for collaboration between a Council and the Government to increase housing supply to improve housing affordability. They define the processes by which Council and the Government will work to achieve this, and include shared aspirational housing targets.

What might it mean for QLD?

Various potential approaches will be investigated to increase housing supply. These could include the creation of ‘Special Housing Areas’ which enable developers an alternative resource consenting process to that provided under the Resource Management Act, and can enable a faster and less costly consenting process.   

What are the next steps, including consultation?

QLDC will work with the Government to draft an accord over coming weeks. Once the accord is finalised, the Council will investigate approaches that will help increase housing supply in order to strive to meet the housing targets in the accord.  QLDC will keep the community informed of progress.