Sayers gets it

The Herald reports:

Auckland must dump the ideology of a compact city and spread out and grow to make housing affordable, says Auckland councillor Greg Sayers.

“Auckland should spread out predominantly to the south where there is a lot of suitable land,” Sayers says in a self-published book, How to Fix Auckland’s Housing Crisis.

The Rodney councillor joins other right-leaning advocates who believe the solution to the city’s housing crisis is to abolish the rural-urban boundary that controls land supply for housing, freeing up planning rules to make it easier for developers and funding infrastructure through user-pays.

It is not just right leaning advocates who say this. Phil Twyford campaigned on abolishing it. But to date I’ve not seen any legislation to do this. He should make it a priority.

The solutions in the book, he said, are essential to solving Auckland’s rapidly growing wealth inequality and poverty issues, dealing with homelessness, eliminating diseases associated with overcrowding and reversing house prices from being the ninth most unaffordable in the world.
“It is morally wrong that many of our next generation of youth have given up any sense of hope of ever becoming homeowners,” Sayers said.
When the Herald approached Mayor Phil Goff for comment, a spokesman said he had not seen or read the book yet.
For information about the book go to: www.gregsayers.co.nz