‘YIMBYs’ win Wellington housing debate: what does that mean for the city?
Saturday, 16 March 2024
Wellington, we love you, but the city is at a crossroads. The Post examines in detail why the capital lags behind other world class cities - and where the solutions lie.
James Barber has moved house five times in the past seven years.
In 2019, the high school teacher, his partner and two children finally made it on to the housing ladder, with the help of family. But all they could afford was a one-bedroom apartment.
Barber gets emotional while speaking about the struggle to find appropriate housing for a dual-income family in inner-city Wellington. For him, it has involved stints flatting with people with mental health issues and a difficult lockdown with two young children in confined spaces.
He’s open about his family’s experience because he feels much of the opposition to “upzoning” in Wellington comes from people who don’t understand the reality of the housing crisis.
“There’s a combination of immense frustration and anger, and sadness that you basically have a generation that has done really well out of the housing market – and this is a gross generalisation – trying to stop changes which they don't like, which might give other people a chance to own a house …”
In particular, Barber’s frustration started with one issue: character zoning.
The span of character areas in Wellington – which protect pre-1930s homes from demolition – was a contentious point in the city council’s big district plan decision on Thursday. The plan, at a basic level, sets the rules for what can and cannot be built and where in the city.
The vote was a call to massively reduce these areas – suburbs of protected villas like Newtown and Aro Valley – from 306 hectares to 85 hectares. The move allows three-by-three townhouses on all sections in non-character areas suburbs and upzoning to six-storeys or higher near transport lines and town centres.
Character advocate Jane O’Loughlin, who runs the group LiveWellington, said character had become the villain in a story about the housing crisis, against the evidence.
One reason it was easy to blame the city’s zoning policies is that it is free to change zoning costs – they have an effect on the market, but don’t require incentives from the government or councils.
“There’s no cost until we see that the character areas we treasured in Wellington have been destroyed.
“And then people will be asking: ‘Oh, how did we let this happen? I didn’t know what was going on’. Well, too late.”
Despite the changes, development in the character areas still has to be in keeping with the rest of the villas in the suburb, making townhouses and apartments a long shot for developers.
Some of the outrage at character had been imported from Auckland and Christchurch, O’Loughlin believed.
“Because this has been a nationwide thing, the villain in other cities tends to be National Party voting, rich people, in big houses on big sections. But transplanted to a Wellington environment, it's quite different.
“The inner city suburbs are not big sections, they are not Ponsonby or Fendalton, they are smaller working class areas. But still the same arguments have been wheeled out to find someone to blame for the housing crisis.”
In Mt Victoria, O’Loughlin’s own suburb, she is particularly concerned there will be islands of density within protected heritage areas, creating a “pepper pot” approach where dense buildings spring up next to villas.
Tutchen Ave is one example where this is possible – it falls between two heritage areas on the council maps, but is zoned for six-storey apartments.
O’Loughlin was firm in her view the city could have had both expanded character areas and enough density to meet future needs. Council staff had admitted there was sufficient capacity for new housing in the plan, whether character areas were reduced or not.
From her perspective, it was obvious that the city should continue to protect character - because while doing so, there would still be enough housing.
This was the conclusion of the Independent Hearings Panel too, and the reason its findings were controversial. Economists said zoning restrictions like character areas did have an effect on housing affordability.
“It’s not houses versus character. The houses are going to be there no matter what. It’s: do you hate character and heritage? Or do you not hate it?”
There was no trade-off or win-lose situation, O’Loughlin said. The city could have kept character and enabled density.
The debate over housing in Wellington has been polarising, and not along usual party lines. Pro-housing Green and Labour councillors welcomed the announcement that National’s Housing Minister Chris Bishop would make the final decision on their District Plan.
City councillors have been forbidden to talk about their thoughts on housing for the past month, based on strict legal advice. It’s been tough for pro-housing councillor Rebecca Matthews.
Matthews was a driving force behind the push for density in Thursday’s meeting, moving amendments that slashed the area covered in character areas, expanding the suburbs included in the high-rise city centre zone, and removing the requirement for apartments and town houses to be set back from property boundaries.
“This is the beginning. It’s not like everything is going to change tomorrow,” she said. The council had work ahead of it to ensure that there was the required transport and water infrastructure to support higher-density developments.
Shrinking the character areas was a particularly important change, Matthews said, because they covered the areas where new housing was most likely to be built.
“That is where people really want to live.”
Right now, young people were moving further and further out in the region so they could buy houses, and places like Lower Hutt had picked up the slack. By allowing more housing Wellington could encourage some of those people to return to the city.
“Nostalgia is not going to serve us well. [When] I moved here in the mid-90s, it was cool, it was cheap, it was walkable, there were grungy, great places to live and a more diverse, arty city … But the only way we can get those things back is by being willing to change.”
Matthews is ready for pushback.
“The resources are very much stacked against new housing in terms of where legal and money and time sits, it is largely with that smaller group who don’t want us to densify the city.”
For character advocates, there was a sense of despondency. Even before Thursday’s vote, they felt a loss was almost inevitable.
After Bishop decides whether to accept the panel recommendations or the council’s amendments, there is no right to appeal.
O’Loughlin was disheartened that after a long process, where LiveWellington put a lot of effort into showing up to the hearings and speaking to the commissioners, councillors voted to override the process.
Matthews said the council decision is supported by economic evidence showing upzoning will make housing more affordable, along with submissions that were disregarded by the panel in its recommendations.
She was optimistic about Bishop going along with the council’s decision based on his speech to Wellington’s Chamber of Commerce, where he said restrictive zoning rules were drivers behind the housing crisis.
Wellington architect and urban planner Angela Foster said she “fully supported” the council’s decisions on Thursday which was “a more progressive approach that would allow the city to grow”.
“I think limiting Wellington’s development and increasing heritage areas [as previously proposed] will not work for the city long term.
“I think we have to look at 2050 and the only way we can do that is by increasing density and doing it in appropriate areas.”
Foster said new proposals should be passed by an urban design panel which would be able to make sure developments were appropriate for their location.
“If you have four of five people having input and ensuring that good design principles are followed, it provides for a fairer, more rigorous process.”
She said this may placate the fears of some residents of suburbs who were concerned about unsightly modern developments destroying the character of their communities.
Foster did not think the new rules would lead to a dramatic loss in character buildings in the city.
“Some of the character that they’re talking about is just old. The actual value of the heritage should be more specifically identified so that we can target areas instead of having a blanket rule that limits progress.”
“You can have small areas of heritage that are well looked after, well maintained and have the ability provide for adaptive reuse so they can be built around and on sympathetically.”
Foster said higher density in the CBD would provide housing for the professional workforce which could help grow the council’s rating base to pay for existing services.
Prominent developer Richard Burrell said one of the main limiting factors on development in Wellington was the capacity of the city’s water and sewerage network to take additional load.
“How can we add another 1000 apartments to Te Aro and not touch the infrastructure?”
He also pointed out that building more affordable housing in the central city would require investments of tens of millions of dollars of public money, or from philanthropic organisations, because it was not a viable proposition for developers.
“I’m for community housing, but the council should be leading it.”
Pro-density group City for People, founded by Marko Garlick and Eleanor West, has been pushing for a dense, upzoned housing plan since 2020. They were stoked with Thursday’s result.
Garlick felt motivated to start a campaign after being shocked that while several groups were formed to protect character areas, no-one was advocating for new, dense housing to solve the housing crisis.
There was an attitude, when the council started to consider reducing character areas back in 2020, of “how dare new homes be allowed in the inner suburbs”. Almost 90% of the inner-city suburbs are covered in character overlays which limit development.
In West’s words, the character areas became a “lightning rod” for the debate.
“It resonated with so many people. So many young people have done their rite of passage living in these mouldy old homes. They’re cold, they’re drafty, they give you asthma.”
West believed the decision made by the council on Thursday would lead to “housing abundance” in the next decade.
“I'm hoping that we'll see new developments going up all over the place. I'm hoping that we'll see lots of cranes. I think real cities have cranes and Wellington doesn't have enough so that would be nice to see.”
How councillors voted:
Yes: Mayor Tory Whanau, Deputy Mayor Laurie Foon, Nureddin Abdurahman, John Apanowicz, Rebecca Matthews, Ben McNulty, Teri O’Neill, Geordie Rogers, Nīkau Wi Neera, Pouiwi Holden Hohaia, Pouiwi Liz Kelly
No: Diane Calvert, Ray Chung, Sarah Free, Iona Pannett, Tony Randle, Nicola Young
Absent: Tim Brown (personal reasons, earlier in the meeting voted against the amendment)