Get on with it: housing edition

Superu says that land use restrictions contribute to 56% of the cost of a house in Auckland.

They don't provide their background workings, so I can't verify the numbers. But if they're close to right, this is a pretty strong indictment of the last decade of government. National has had almost a decade to fix this mess. Sure, they'll blame their coalition partners for not letting them change the RMA, but they had chances to do it before National lost Northland.

And there are plenty of non-RMA things they could have done too. Councils use the flexibility within the RMA to set restrictive district plans because it's generally in their financial interest to do so. Central government could change that without touching the RMA. Councils hitting their debt limits can't finance the infrastructure needed for long-term growth, even if that infrastructure easily passes normal cost-benefit assessment.

Things this government has failed to do to encourage housing affordability, and it has been almost a decade now:

• RMA reform;
• Enabling municipal utility districts to impose special levies in new developments to finance infrastructure: it's how tons of new development in Texas gets financed, and how they maintain housing affordability. You can do it through that kind of MUD structure; you can do it with other structures that finance infrastructure through targeted levies that are kept separate from Council's balance sheets;
• Punting the GST from new construction back to Councils to help them defray infrastructure costs;
• Abolish rural-urban boundaries;
• Tie Council ability to set restrictive urban plans to existing measures of housing affordability. Stuff like "You can set whatever district plans you like, but if the median house price is more than five times the median household income, we will automatically ratchet up the allowed density across the whole city, abolish heritage preservation districts that mostly work as ways for old rich people to keep away the kinds of people they don't like, and abolish urban growth boundaries. Have fun."

Lots of stuff government could have done, and should have done earlier. Lots of stuff government still can do. Get on with it already.