This Wednesday’s council meeting (July 6) will bring to a head several years of work by both the council and the Central Otago Affordable Housing Trust when a paper comes up that brings back to council the results of the recent consultation on affordable housing.

You may remember that the community was asked if they agreed to council supporting the development of affordable housing in the district, and also whether they agreed with council contributing land (and associated profit) to the Central Otago Affordable Housing Trust worth the equivalent of $16m to establish a secure homes model in the region.

In total, a pleasing 480 responses were received, and the results were very interesting.

Firstly, 75 per cent of respondents agreed that council support the development of affordable housing in Central Otago. 

From there, 67 per cent also agreed that council should contribute land worth the equivalent of $8M ($4M each from Cromwell and Vincent wards) to the Central Otago Affordable Housing Trust to establish a secure homes model in this region.

This is a fairly strong voice in support of a proposal that could see a loss of the return council would receive on developing the land of around $16M, based on the $8M value of the of land value and $8M worth of net profit if developed.

The breakdown of people responding is fascinating to me. The natural thought might be that people who were in their own homes already might lean toward not supporting the proposal, yet the majority of respondents (73 per cent) already live in their own home in Central Otago.

Certainly, the age breakdown shows a far greater support for council contributing land amongst the under 60s.

People gave a variety of reasons for supporting the proposal with quite a number noting thoughts along the lines that affordable housing helped address inequality in our community by helping those into a home who otherwise may not be able to afford it, encouraging inclusion and supporting community well-being.

Overwhelmingly the most common theme was that it is not council’s role to play a part in affordable housing. Many felt it was a function of central government and council should not be subsidising housing at the expense of the rate payer. Respondents felt council should focus on core business and invest in infrastructure first.

It is going to be a very interesting discussion come Wednesday, as the decision needs to be made as to whether to progress down the path of gifting land to the trust or not.  If council does go down that path, the matter would need to come back to the community for consultation in far greater depth, most likely as part of the 2024-2034 Long Term Plan consultation process.

The full report can be found here on-line.

The debate should start around 2.30pm although tuning into the live stream from around 2pm might be the safer option as it is hard to definitively give a time for when things will come up.