Rosco that comes back to the problem of nobody living in NZ. You can't fund automation without economies of scale. It's impossibly expensive.
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Is this the coolest idea to help with housing crisis?
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Donna, I agree, kiwis just won't do this work. And you can't make the unemployed do it - they say they don't have transport... can't climb ladders... blah blah blah.
But this issue is like nothing really because we're talking about what, 1000 workers? AND they go home afterwards. So it's fine.
We have more than 1300 being added to the general population each week. And they can stay forever.Squadly dinky do!
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Could govt. become a lender for new builds at a discounted mortgage rate?
If they offered, say, a 2.5% fixed mortgage on the purchase of development land and construction,
would that entice any of you to build rather then buy?
The capital stays on their books above inflation rate, and houses get built by getting new home owners and investors a good deal.
Win-win? Or will that only push up land prices exorbitantly?
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The idea might relieve pressure in the very short term, but at the end of the day it's no better a solution than the recent suggestion of getting everyone into tiny houses on wheels.
By putting forth all these ideas about how we can house people without building any new houses is just a shameful admission that we've wrapped so much red tape around producing the housing we need that we've given up solving the actual problem.
As long as the RMA gives the monopoly on subdivision resource consents and building consents to councils, councils will never operate efficiently and will always charge arbitrarily.
As long as the Building Act, Building Code and Building Regulations give Fletcher, Carter Holt Harvey and James Hardie - and to a lesser degree some others, an oligopoly on building materials via their influence on BRANZ those companies will never operate efficiently either. They will also continue to operate as a cartel and charge arbitrarily.
Without addressing those problems our housing problem will always get worse and never get better.
I'm going to build a house on my farm this year using douglas fir logs felled and milled on site and concrete mixed from gravel excavated on site. It will have a full flush composting septic system and hydroelectric power from the nearby gully. I'm doing it all without any consents because it's so far off the beaten track the council will never find out about it. I'm estimating around $20k worth of materials in addition to what I already have on site. It will be 120m2, warm, dry, durable and far stronger and more energy efficient than the average stick frame home the council lets you build. If I complied with the RMA and went through the council, and used BRANZ approved materials this home would be more like $200k. I don't give a stuff about the resale problems.
The bottom line is that ever since the dawn of mankind if we needed shelter we built it. From cave men to tent dwelling nomads, to agrarian people living in thatched huts all the way through millennia up until the last hundred years we have had the natural right to shelter, and if someone came along and tried to take that right away I dare say violence of some kind ensued.
Somehow over the last century that right has been eroded in practice. Apparently New Zealand is a signatory to some kind of United Nations treaty whereby it officially recognizes it's citizen's right to an "adequate standard of living", which any reasonable person would contend includes the right to shelter.
It seems remarkably counter intuitive that a government would make such a commitment and then effectively develop it's legislation to remove that right from many people by simply making the process of building shelter beyond their means.
It's a bit like giving everyone the right to breathe the air free of charge, then putting an oxygen tax only half the population can afford in place and arresting anyone who won't, or can't, pay up.
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Originally posted by Rosco View PostThe winner of our recent facebook competition on the housing crisis, had this unique and smart idea. "Don't let businesses operate out of residential properties!". In Hamilton for example there is a huge number accountants, lawyers, doctors and other small businesses that own or rent a residential property to use for their business. In a relatively short period if all of these properties were available for families, this could have a huge impact on the housing crisis. Perhaps bringing down house prices and stopping rents jumping so quickly. It might sound hash on the small businesses, but in a lot of the country there is a lot of empty commercial space that could be better utilised. Also the majority of these businesses could operate just as well from a commercial property.
What do you think?
Ross
What do regulators do about this? Look the other way of course because THEY do not have to wear what they have inflicted on ordinary citizens. When public officials are impacted the offending properties are closed down in weeks.
The issue is one which is completely preventable. It is a deliberate behaviour and the public is supposed to wear both bad behaviour, residential amenity turned into commercial misbehaviour and family homes used for what they were never intended. We all pay for this when ordinary folk leave a suburb and tradespeople are not available.
What you going to do about it? Somebody else's problem to fix? Enjoy!
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