During this past month, there have been a series of reports in the ODT of increases in both house and rent prices in Otago, by those in authority who also write the rules over subdivisions.
Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull opined that he had been ``warning for some time that housing was a problem all over the country, including Dunedin''.
We can all breathe a little easier now the Dunedin City Council is finally on to the problem - or can we?
The mayor went on to say the council would develop a comprehensive housing strategy this year to address the issue. One assumes the freeing up of land for subdivision and ensuring the building of more houses will be foremost in the strategy.
Actually, no. It appears that Mayor Cull's minimum standard of rental accommodation is the way to address a shortage of housing. MP Clare Curran also believes there is a housing crisis and the way to resolve it is to lower the cost of rental accommodation.
Forgive this moment of self-indulgence but I would have thought that here in Otago, building more fully insulated houses would be the first rational thing to do.
The second and possibly even more sensible thing to do would be to suspend the district plans, along with all planners.
Such people are often described as ``learned practitioners of sacred environmental planning law'' (unfairly described by some as mullahs). They constantly state that the council oppose a rural subdivision due to the outstanding landscape.
To quote DCC planner Lianne Darby: ``Allowing rural property owners to subdivide small parcels for residential use, scattered around a large farm property, is not in accordance with the expectations of either the district plan or the proposed plan.''
``Sustainable'' is but one reason why consent should be denied but Ms Darby fails to mention exactly whose sustainability is under threat here. It is actually the landowner. Why is it that an outstanding landscape can contain only vegetation and livestock and not human beings?
Ms Darby is in effect saying rural people cannot expect to develop their land through a sympathetic subdivision, especially if it is in an ``outstanding rural environment'' - which, of course, is about 100% of all rural land.
Why would planners and environmental organisations want to stop people choosing to live in such places as Central Otago and (say) the Otago Peninsula?
There appears to be no appetite to require councils to buy the development rights to such land - when they can effectively take it at no cost. How principled is that?
During just one week (as reported in the ODT) planners in Otago were recommending four different rural subdivision or 45 newly created sections should be denied planning permission, despite this time of a ``housing crisis''. Presumably, if these houses could be built, there would then be an extra 45 existing houses available for sale or rent in Otago.
Meantime, planners drive and fly around the countryside drawing lines on maps where no developer may ever set foot, now or into the future. One particular reason given to decline consent to subdivide is that the scenic view of an existing (often unprofitable) rural property must not be compromised.
Nearby residents who did somehow receive planning permission not only continue to enjoy the farming vista but are also comforted by the sight of the rise and rise of their property's value being protected by council rules.
Rural New Zealand is now constantly treated by planners as some sort of historic landscape - a relic of a bygone era when the world wanted our wool and frozen lamb. Crossbred wool cannot be given away at this time and lamb returns are about half of what they need to be to sustain small communities.
Now this may come as a shock to those embedded into the public system drawing an entirely self-sustaining salary, but farming sheep and beef is becoming entirely unsustainable so the prospect of subdividing off a few hectares is a sensible option to at least maintain the illusion of rural sustainability.
The real question for councillors and planners especially is whether individual landowners' choices and freedoms, ownership rights and self-determination are true New Zealand values worthy of real consideration and preservation - or do such aspirational values simply manifest themselves as threats to the upholding of councils' ever-changing book of words.
Lines on maps and the authority contained with district plans can be as wrong-headed as the theory by which they were drawn.
Gerrard Eckhoff, of Central Otago, is a former Otago regional councillor.
