One of the driving forces behind the Queenstown Lakes' affordable housing scheme was honoured at Thursday's full district council meeting in Queenstown.
David Cole, who helped establish the Queenstown Lakes District Community Housing Trust in 2007, stepped down as chairman earlier this month.
On Thursday, Mayor Vanessa van Uden thanked Mr Cole.
"We owe you a huge vote of thanks ... for all your hard work.
"You're leaving the trust in a very healthy place and you have delivered an enormous amount of good quality housing.''Mr Cole told the council Queenstown was not alone in dealing with affordability.
"It's a challenge because of the nature of where we live and almost every tourist resort around the world has the challenges we face here in terms of housing.
"But this is a collaborative effort.''
Later in the meeting, Cr Alexa Forbes asked Ms van Uden if there would be a council response to Housing Minister Nick Smith's criticisms, published in Mountain Scene, of the progress on special housing areas (SHA).
Dr Smith said, overall, housing supply and affordability had become more challenging and he was "not satisfied that sufficient land is being freed up in the Queenstown Lakes district''.
In October 2014, the council signed a housing accord with the Government, agreeing to have 1300 more homes built within the district over three years.
It set a target of 350 sections and dwelling consents in the first year, 450 in the second and 500 in the third.
In the first year, which ended in October 2015, 557 sections and dwellings were consented.
On Thursday Cr Forbes said she felt the council had done "quite a lot'' under the accord.
"I don't know what more we could have done.''
Ms van Uden said she would discuss it with Dr Smith at their next regular meeting, next month.
The recommendation for a Gorge Rd SHA - which would make it easier for developers to build houses and apartments of up to six storeys - was sent to Dr Smith on Wednesday.
Recommendations for the Arrowtown Retirement Village and Shotover Country were sent yesterday.
Those were approved by the council in November, but the delay "wasn't us stuffing around'', Ms van Uden told councillors.
Once an SHA was approved by council, developers had to do a significant amount of work before the proposal could be referred to the minister.
"It's easy to put us in the spotlight on that,'' she said.
"I think it would be an advantageous process for people ... before they go expressing letters of opinion about who's doing what and who's not doing what ... to get a slight bit more information ... before they start having a go.''
Ms van Uden told the ODT part of the delay with SHA recommendations was waiting for deeds to be drafted and signed by the developer and council.
The legally binding deeds included agreed components of developments, including, for example, a contribution to the housing trust.
"People can say ‘that's us being bureaucratic' but once we send that away, that's pretty much our last chance to make sure those things outside of resource consenting ... are all done.‘‘We want to know when we send it off to the minister ... everything we agreed to is sorted.''
