As I write this, I am not sure whether to get angry or just wither in despair. I’ve chosen the former.

It is a beautiful spring morning and so I should be perkier. In fact, I got out of bed on the right side, so what went wrong?

I read the newspaper, and two things in it sent me on a downward spiral.

First was a story about a group of residents in Auckland’s Beach Haven who won their fight to stop a proposed block of 81 apartments which they say would have brought crime and young people to the suburb. Imagine that! Young people! How disgusting! One of the NIMBYs who submitted against the proposal said the plans “are a recipe sure to extinguish what is left of the Kiwi suburban lifestyle we once all aspired to”.

What they have missed is the huge number of people in New Zealand who simply aspire to owning a roof over their head, or even being able to rent one at an affordable price.

I then read a Letter to the Editor by another NIMBY, this time Dunedin based, who said that modern terraced houses were “the slums of the present”, akin to battery cages for hens and “lacked basic amenities…such as an internal access garage and a decent sized yard”.  

Really? 

And don’t think it doesn’t happen here. I had a delegation of worthies once come to see me who promised that, if a certain sub-division went ahead in Central, they would make sure I wasn’t re-elected. They were shown the door and the sharp end of my tongue. I’m still here, the sub-division is now there, and I couldn’t be happier about that much at least.

When did so many people in this country go from thinking about the “we” to only thinking about the “me”?

The simple reality is that an awful lot of people cannot afford to buy the traditional homes these NIMBYs no doubt luxuriate in. I’ve had a look at realestate.com today and see that the Cromwell median asking price is $935,000 and median weekly rental is $618 per week while Alexandra is $749,500 and rental $520. That is a lot of money, especially if you are a young one starting from a low base competing with cashed up buyers from up north which we are seeing a lot of here.

One of the reasons these prices are so high is that what we have on offer in Central is by-and-large “meat and three vege” housing: traditional family homes on large sections. The sort of places George from Roslyn feels are all that should be available. The doer-uppers have been done up and there is very limited stock of smaller housing for people to get a foot on the property ladder.

Simply put, what we need is someone to have the courage to develop some small section, multi-storey places for people to live in Central Otago.

And if and when someone does that, people knocking on my door to complain about ghettos being proposed near them need to know that the reception might not be all that nice.