What’s in … the Briefing for the Incoming Housing Minister?
In December 2020, the Briefing to the Incoming Minister of Housing and Urban Development was released to the public. In this journal article, our first for 2021, Lucy explores what’s in it for stakeholders in housing, planning, and development in Aotearoa.
BIMs are an absolute treasure trove of policy background and future direction.
What are BIMs?
Briefings to Incoming Ministers (BIMs), are prepared for incoming Ministers following the formation of a new Government. They are a treasure trove of information, providing an introduction to each Government portfolio and a summary of key areas of policy and policy issues. In December last year, the Government issued over 150 documents, including BIMs for public sector agencies and Crown Entities, as well as supporting documents.
What’s in the Housing BIM?
In this article, I focus on the BIM to the incoming Minister for Housing and Urban Development. The increasingly over-heated housing market and chronic housing affordability issues are stoking calls for urgent government action from a range of housing stakeholders, including economists and the social housing sector. So, what’s in the BIM and what are some of the implications for councils, community housing providers (CHPs), Māori, and others?
What’s in the BIM for Councils?
Reform of the RMA
The Government has reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA) and other urban development legislation keenly within its sights. Reading the BIM, it’s clear the Ministry for Housing and Urban Development (MHUD) plans an active role in what it calls ‘supporting and shaping’ the RMA. It wants to see unnecessary regulatory barriers to residential construction removed and the growth and change of urban areas facilitated and supported to drive down the cost of development and improve housing affordability. Further urban reforms are also being explored, including investigating ways to address unnecessary land use constraints. This is likely to impact district and, possibly, regional planning, and therefore have a direct impact on councils, their staff, and their communities.
As we’ve seen with the Urban Development Act (UDA), the Government isn’t shy to devolve significant planning powers to Kāinga Ora to facilitate urban development that ‘contributes to sustainable, inclusive, and thriving communities’ (section 3, UDA). However, councils preferring more of a ‘do’ rather than a ‘done to’ approach in their cities and districts may wish to expedite discussions with their communities and stakeholders about their housing need and position themselves to actively influence and contribute to the future direction of development in their areas.
The rise of spatial planning
The BIM also reiterates MHUD’s commitment to influencing the shape and direction of spatial planning legislation. Spatial planning is one of the preferred tools for more effective resource management planning set out in the Randerson Report, which we discussed in this journal article last year. Spatial planning will, according to Randerson, ‘provide opportunities for better-integrated management of environmental issues, and for cumulative effects to be addressed, including through programmes and projects managed under other legislation’ (Randerson Report, p.27). The BIM doesn’t expand on this rather broad definition of spatial planning. As Clint Betteridge illustrates in his recent article for Planning Quarterly on the topic of spatial planning, we are still a long way (a worryingly long way, given our housing crisis and 2030 climate change commitments) from landing on what it really means in the context of planning and development policy and practice in Aotearoa.
The BIM’s commitment to developing ‘place-based approaches and solutions’ to New Zealand’s housing crisis perhaps hints at what’s to come in the spatial planning space. It is one of the key approaches to the delivery of MHUD’s housing programme and the BIM gives details on the areas of work already completed or underway. A useful resource that’s been produced by MHUD is a heatmap to identify places experiencing poor housing outcomes in Aotearoa. These are broadly defined maps, but it’s encouraging to see housing data being used to tell a complex story visually and spatially.
A snapshot of a snapshot. Housing heatmaps identify places experiencing poor housing outcomes in Aotearoa.
Under pressure?
The sheer volume of potential legislative reform on the horizon in planning, urban development, and housing is likely to have some significant time and cost implications for councils, and stretch the capacity (and possibly patience) of council planning and housing departments. However, maybe now is the time for councils to take advantage of the brain gain, which has been Aotearoa’s unexpected blessing out of the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. Spatial planning is de rigeur in Kiwi expat hotspots such as the UK, Canada, Ireland, and the United States, and returning planners may provide an invaluable boost to our skill base at this critical time.
What’s in the BIM for Māori?
The BIM restates the Ministry’s commitment to Te Maihi o te Whare Māori – the Māori and Iwi Housing Innovation (MAIHI) Framework for Action - as one of two key approaches set out in the BIM to address the housing crisis. Endorsed by Cabinet in June 2020, MAIHI is intended to ‘deliver, at pace, a system-wide response to Māori housing stress that is critically required through the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and the post-pandemic recovery periods’. As politicians shuck off their jandals and roll up their sleeves, the BIM indicates we can expect :
Continued response to immediate priorities of decreasing homelessness and increasing housing security;
Ongoing review of policies and programmes to break the cycle of inequities housing stress for whānau, hapū, and Iwi; and
More actions to reset Crown policies, systems, and processes so they can respond appropriately to Māori needs, protect Māori interests, and uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations and settlements.
Some of the tangible outputs from these workstreams will be delivered by successful applicants to the $3 million He Taupua Fund, which closed in November 2020. Initiatives funded under He Taupua will contribute to the implementation of MAIHI by strengthening the delivery of kaupapa Māori approaches and building the capability of whānau trusts and Ahu Whenua trusts, hapū, iwi, and registered Māori housing providers. It’ll be interesting to see what projects are given the green light as part of this funding, and how the fund is resourced in the 2021 Budget.
What’s in the BIM for Community Housing Providers (CHPs)?
CHPs are an important part of New Zealand’s housing response and infrastructure. According to the BIM, together Kāinga Ora and CHPs have built or enabled 6,300 new homes, as well as contributing to emergency housing provision during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Alongside Iwi, Māori, and Kāinga Ora; CHPs have also developed innovative housing solutions around financing, tenure, and design.
The BIM underscores the critical role of CHPs in delivering MHUD’s housing agenda through its commitment to exploring more fundamental changes to existing core housing settings. This includes the provision of subsidies and supports to improve housing affordability for the lowest income households and ensuring the effectiveness of current government spending on housing.
Over the past two years, the BIM reports progress in amplifying the role of Māori in delivering outcomes for Māori through a number of measures, including finance and support to deliver Māori-led development projects and an increase in the number of Māori housing providers. A key priority for delivery across housing programmes, through MAIHI, is a continuation of this growth in Māori CHPs.
Reading between the lines of the BIM, Government appears to be signalling that CHPs will need to ensure they have the ability to scale up on their own and meet the housing challenge in their areas. This could include by having redevelopment capacity and capability in-house to make the most of their portfolios, or partner to achieve redevelopment outcomes. It will be interesting to see how CHPs respond to this opportunity (and challenge) over the coming months and years.
What’s in the BIM for Kāinga Ora?
As Government’s primary housing and urban development delivery arm, it’s unsurprising that Kāinga Ora’s activities and programme are a key feature of the BIM. However, we’ll have to wait until October this year and the publication of the Government Policy Statement on Housing and Urban Development (GPS) for specific details of MHUD’s expectations for Kāinga Ora. The GPS is a requirement of the Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities Act 2019, and as well as setting out the Government’s priorities for housing and urban development, must include:
the Government’s overall direction for housing and urban development, which must include a multi-decade outlook;
how the Government expects Kāinga Ora to manage its functions and operations to meet the Government’s direction and priorities for housing and urban development;
how the Government expects other agencies to support that direction and those priorities;
the Government’s expectations in relation to Māori interests, partnering with Māori, and protections for Māori interests; and
how the Government expects Kāinga Ora to recognise the need to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Given the breadth and depth of the GPS, I’ve no doubt it will be a must-read for anyone involved in housing and development.