Doug Fairgray: Is the bipartisan attempt to boost urban housing density the right way to go?

In a rare show of bipartisan cooperation, the Labour and National parties teamed-up to enact new housing intensification laws in late 2021.

This came through the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act. Pushed through a rushed select committee process to the protestations of the ACT and Green parties, it will allow the building of up to three homes of up to three storeys on most sites in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch without the need for a resource consent.

Councils in the five cities are now moving to adopt medium density residential standards (MDRS). 

But what does all this really mean, where's the process at, and is this actually the right way to tackle New Zealand's housing crisis?

To discuss all this we spoke with Doug Fairgray, director at consulting and economic research firm Market Economics, in a new episode of the Of Interest podcast.

"One of the effects [of the changes] will be that the distribution of new housing supply is likely to become spread more widely across cities rather than focused around centres and transit stations as is intended under the National Policy Statement [on Urban Development]," Fairgray says.

"There has been a strong narrative, [over] the last decade at least, that planning is to blame for high housing prices. And that has led to a focus that therefore planning legislation should solve the problem. There's quite a debate about that because house prices have been driven above all by consumer sentiment and interest rates," adds Fairgray, who is also secretary of the Association for Resource Management Practitioners.

You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.