Auckland's youngest councillor says the city must build more homes to help improve affordability or opt to keep pushing young people out, as council voted 17-5 to allow greater housing intensification around major public transport lines and town centres.
The vote, at a planning committee meeting yesterday, locks in the council's position for the next year on the Government's directive to zone for more homes. The decision also clears the way for another round of public submissions.
The amended version of Plan Change 120 would leave the vast majority of the region untouched except to downzone for natural hazards and flooding risks, with new housing more tightly packed into several suburbs deemed to have better transport access.
Mayor Wayne Brown said: "The option we've gone with is a compromise between those who wanted us to do less and those, like me, who wanted us to do more.
"85% of properties won’t be affected, but we are going to get intensification where we've sunk billions of dollars into better public transport and where it makes sense.
"It is fair to say most Aucklanders are sick and tired of talking about intensification and plan changes – our decision delivers a good, balanced outcome and we don’t need the goal posts shifted anymore."
Zoning for more intensification would occur predominantly within 10 kilometres of the city centre along public transport corridors, such as train and major bus lines.
This would include six storeys along bus corridors along Dominion Rd, Sandringham Rd, Great North Rd, and Onewa Rd, among several others.
Ten-to-fifteen storeys would be enabled around metropolitan centres and train stations such as Ōrākei, Remuera, and Glen Innes — in addition to the five other stations in the inner-west which have required upzoning as a result of government mandates.
Controversial zoning changes known as plan change 120 will introduce more high-rise buildings to certain suburbs. (Source: 1News)
Town centres, train and busway stations would also be upzoned to six storeys in more suburban parts of the city, almost as a result of government-directed mandates.
Outside of those areas, Auckland's suburban zoning would remain either the same or less than under the existing Unitary Plan.
The changes respond to Government legislation that cut Auckland's minimum housing capacity requirement from around two million homes to a minimum of 1.4 million.
The current Unitary Plan provides theoretical capacity for around 1.2 million homes, while the proposed changes are estimated to allow between roughly 1.5 and 1.7 million.
An independent hearings panel will consider submissions received in the next round of engagement and hold public hearings before making recommendations to the council, which is expected to make final decisions on Plan Change 120 in mid-2027.
Opposition amendments soundly defeated
The final 17-5 vote was split more heavily in favour of the more ambitious of the two options, though it was still a plan which was still billed as a significant "compromise" from earlier intensification proposals and options made available to councillors.
Several suburban councillors who had previously expressed caution about government housing mandates said they were persuaded by compromises made in the proposed plan following local board and mana whenua feedback.
The most important, included scrapping upzoning around 24 local centres, which made the two options on offer largely identical for areas more than 10km beyond the CBD.
Committee chairperson, councillor Richard Hills, pressed for a decision after years of delay, noting Auckland was the last region to act after it was granted extra flexibility.
"Love or hate the Government, and many people will know views of mine, but they have listened, and we're now at a place where we have to make a decision, not just keep asking them to re-listen," said the Labour-affiliated councillor.
Hills stressed the capacity figures were not a building target.
"Housing capacity is not a target for how many homes will actually be built," he said.
"It measures how many homes Auckland's planning rules could theoretically allow over time if every eligible site was developed to its maximum permitted capacity.
"This is a plan for 30 years or more. The number of homes ultimately built will continue to depend on factors such as population growth, market demand, infrastructure availability and decisions made by property owners and developers."
Those supporting the recommended intensification plan included deputy mayor and Ōrākei councillor Desley Simpson, Howick's Maurice Williamson, Rodney's Greg Sayers, and Manurewa-Papakura councillors Daniel Newman and Matt Winiata.
Before the final vote, councillors and Houkura members voted down two amendments.
One from Waitematā councillor Mike Lee sought a full pause and appeal to ministers to change the timeframe, arguing the process should wait for the Government's incoming resource management legislation before proceeding any further. It lost 15 to seven.
Consents for new builds appear to have bottomed out, with Auckland apartments leading a comeback. (Source: 1News)
Lee said the plan change was deeply unpopular in the very areas it applied to, and pointed to the council's submissions data as evidence.
He argued the changes were less about public transport than about opening up valuable land to developers, singling out inner suburbs like St Mary's Bay.
"What is damaging ... is the wrecking or the destruction of Auckland's historic special character areas. There's no getting around that."
A second amendment, from councillor John Gillon, proposed the council pick a bare minimum, but legally compliant option. It lost 16 to seven.
North Shore councillor Gillon called for better "master planning" of the city, saying there were ample housing supply opportunities for younger generations.
"We are here because of previous poor decisions from successive governments, who thought it wise to force Auckland to take on unrealistic and unnecessary amounts of dwelling capacity without properly master planning the city," he said.
"It's not much to ask to plan properly for our city's growth, and I hear the arguments for providing additional housing for the next generation. However, there is already ample capacity in the existing Unitary Plan to accommodate that".
He added that he did not believe the final recommended plan was a "compromise" as it would still have to include government-mandated six-storey intensification around train and busway stations, which enabled more homes than the status quo Unitary Plan.
Albany councillor John Watson, who voted against, said the plan created "the appearance of [housing] supply without really the substance".
"Upzoning can increase housing supply, but that's generally over the medium-to-long term, but the magnitude of that really varies quite significantly depending on local conditions, and studies have shown that the effect on prices is often modest," he said.
Q+A goes underground to see the new stations and asks what it takes to get a return on the investment. (Source: Q and A)
Watson said the focus should be elsewhere for building more homes, such as loans and other schemes to help first-home buyers.
"That's what delivered affordability. Not some colouring-in pencils on a map of Auckland and big talk about ambition and progress, and you know, 'everyone's to their apartment tomorrow,' because that's not what's happened. It's not what's going to happen."
Albert-Eden councillor Christine Fletcher, whose ward close to the city centre was one of the most affected by the plan change, quoted a local intensification opponent and resident, former prime minister Helen Clark, in a call to protect character homes.
She added that the decision should not be made in a rush in supporting an amendment.
"For many, these homes represent a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice. In character areas, they have invested even more, paying additional costs to maintain and protect these properties — because we, as a council, asked them to," she said.
"We should respect that investment."
Fletcher said: "I don't want to be looking back as a governor of this city and know that we've done it in a rush, that we haven't put forward all of the issues that the council want to see being addressed. It is still imperfect. It's hurried with unanswered questions."
But her counterpart in the Albert-Eden ward, Julie Fairey, had a different view.
"This is better on climate. It is better on cost and affordability for infrastructure. It is better on fairness in the way that it spreads intensity across the train lines," she said.
"I see sticking with the bare minimum as just another delay, and predatory delay is the deliberate slowing of necessary systemic change to prolong a profitable but unsustainable status quo."
Debate amplifies generational divides
Many comments supporting the more intensive plan hinged around improving housing affordability, or the compromises reached for suburban parts of the region.
Albany councillor Victoria Short, the youngest member around the table, said the stakes were highest for people her age.
"I can speak for many when I say housing is the future for my generation," she said.
"I honestly don't understand why we would pause or be timid about measures that would benefit young people, families, and the general. Right now, we are pushing them to leave Auckland and potentially New Zealand altogether.
"We should be do we should be doing everything in our power to keep them here."
Manurewa-Papakura councillor Daniel Newman said he was pleased with the compromise which saw almost all discretionary intensification removed from his ward. He disagreed with the characterisation that proposed amendments at council were predatory delay.
"The issues for me have been the removal of the local centres and the rethink of the frequent transit network as it relates to the area outside of the city centre," he said.
"As a regional councillor, I'm very proudly comfortable with what this will achieve. I appreciate not everybody's going to be happy, but frankly, for us, it's a win."
Meanwhile, Fairey backed the affordability case.
"We know from the increase in capacity from the Auckland Unitary Plan that it has brought rents down… It has shifted the dial on housing affordability from us being super, extremely severely unaffordable to now only severely unaffordable," he said.
Avidly pro-housing reform councillor Shane Henderson said he was disappointed the council had not gone further in creating more opportunities for housing development.
"I don't understand why in all these discussions, all this energy is expended by this body to hold the city back, to grind down our ambition, and to stop progress," he said.
"The best water infrastructure for intensification is in the centrally located suburbs of Auckland… We are investing billions into the City Rail Link and the Central Interceptor, and yet we have the same old arguments here for holding down growth."
Henderson endorsed the recommended option but said he wanted more.
"Scenario D had an economic benefit of 3.9 billion dollars to the city. That's jobs. That's money in the pockets of Aucklanders who are struggling.
"I wish we were talking about capitalising on that today."
Pro-housing advocates argue zoning capacity must significantly exceed demand for the market to work — giving developers enough choice of sites to make projects viable and allowing prices to respond to demand, making them lower than they would otherwise be.
Residents' groups have argued that further intensification made possible under the changed zoning signalled the wholesale transformation of established neighbourhoods.
Concerns were most acute in inner-city suburbs like Mt Eden and Parnell, which hold "character" protections on aesthetic and architectural grounds.
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