HOUSING AFFORDABILITY
We urgently need to address the gap between wanting to promote intensification of housing to save productive rural land and the legislation that makes co-housing and tiny housing options so difficult.
Co-housing and tiny housing are options that people in Tasman are screaming out for. For people trying to get on the
We need to work with developers looking to make this happen. In the current market any time a developer makes any kind of suggestion that they might be providing this kind of option they are inundated with inquiries and often have more offers than they have potential sections by a factor of two or three. All without any advertising.
Unfortunately, although our political direction is for further intensification of our urban areas, our planning rules and regulations are lagging behind with providing clear and slippery pathways to enable these developments to happen. When these proposals are brought to Council there should not be a constant screen of moving hoops to jump through. If we want intensification, as we say
Waiting for potential future changes to the Resource Management Act is not helping the many people without legitimate homes today. We need to act, and we need to act today.
The end result of the current mixed messages is that there is a relatively large population living within Tasman who
SOCIAL HOUSING
No plan to sell Tasman pensioner cottages to the highest bidder. However, having worked with groups like Habitat For Humanity I can see the benefit of an arrangement where they step in to run Council-owned housing. They can leverage funding from many different sources to create something a lot bigger than what Tasman District Council is prepared to offer.
If we want to see our social housing stock grow then these community-led groups are in a better position to do it.