The economics of social housing builds
Michael Gibson’s piece (ODT Opinion 30.9.25) regarding the current community housing situation is factually incorrect and demonstrates a revolutionary suspicion of basic economics.
Firstly, I am the one who is building and will own the additional 11 community housing apartments at the Loan & Mercantile Building. The Salvation Army are leasing the apartments. The current government is not allowing Kāinga Ora to build additional stock in the region because they were simply not very good at it.
We and other private sector development companies around the country are delivering projects at far less cost than Kāinga Ora projects and to a higher standard. Mr Gibson’s favoured solution of rent controls in Dunedin "until supply of social and community housing at income-related rents increases substantially" is no sort of answer because no private sector developer — or bank — will finance and deliver new housing stock if there is a massive gap between the overall cost and the rents received.
The key thing to remember is that for a typical Kāinga Ora project, the income-related rents received from tenants for a typical housing unit are less than 20 % of the actual annual cost when all costs are taken into account. And even the government can’t afford this massive gap.
[Russell Lund is a Dunedin City Council councillor candidate.]
My refrain
Lala Frazer’s letter (ODT 2.10.25) claims that my refrain is that "the Otago Regional Council should be taken over by the DCC".
Not quite. My refrain has been for Dunedin to be free of the useless ORC, specifically free of ORC extra rates, duplicate hurdles bureaucracy, and the ORC stifling lazy leasehold grasp of our harbourside land which Dunedin’s ancestors reclaimed and developed for a century before it was wrongly gifted to the ORC in 1989.
DCC already does most Dunedin regulatory monitoring, compliance, and environmental work. There is little useful for Dunedin to take over from the ORC except for the buses, which are largely government funded and DCC should run them anyway.
If the Otago region wants to fund the burgeoning bureaucracy of the ORC they are welcome, but without Dunedin paying, I doubt it will.
[Lee Vandervis is a Dunedin city councillor and DCC and mayoral candidate.]
The winner is . . .
Tony Fitchett (Letters 23.9.25) certainly hits the nail on the head when he points out a "win is a win until it is not."
Back in the same 1980s era, the Higher Salaries Commission was an independent body that determined the salaries of members of Parliament, judges, senior government and local body staff and university lecturers. After a particularly generous increase in 1988, university staff were removed from the privileged group under the State Services Restructuring Bill.
The take-home message seemed to be, "Beware a big win". One hardly needs to guess which privileged groups still benefit from the Remuneration Authority which replaced the Higher Salaries Commission.
Govt should not build roof over Auckland’s head
Once again the government has found money for another Auckland project with the payment of a third of the cost of a retractable roof for Stanley St Tennis Centre.
It may only be $5 million but sets a terrible precedent: Eden Park also wants a retractable roof at an estimated total cost of $282m.
I expect the government will announce soon that they will also cover the cost of a third of that. Let’s not forget that the government contributed $190m of the $240m upgrade of Eden Park for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
All governments need to stop rewarding Auckland every time it sticks its hand out in the direction of the Beehive. Other parts of New Zealand understand the term self help but Auckland obviously not.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: letters@odt.co.nz
