Yesterday, on the eve of the task force's first meeting in Queenstown, stakeholders and community members celebrated the completion of the trust's new 44-lot housing development in Shotover Country.
At the informal function, Queenstown Lakes Mayor Jim Boult said housing affordability was the ''biggest handbrake we've got''.
''[It's] the cost of buying a house and surviving here as an ordinary family.
''During the election campaign, a former mayor ... said to me 'dealing with issues around housing affordability is not a council issue'.
''I take a different view.
''Council needs to take a lead and try and do some work around it.''
On Friday, the Otago Daily Times reported the Central Otago Lakes region had officially overtaken Auckland to become the least affordable region for housing in New Zealand.
The region was now 68% less affordable than the rest of the country, surpassing Auckland at 55%, and its median house price is now almost 14 times the median annual wage.
Mr Boult told the ODT yesterday he would not say yet who was on the task force, but said members included an economist, a banker, people with building expertise and representatives from the real estate sector.
''It's a broad-brush approach ... this is just a clean piece of paper [and] no idea is a bad idea.''
While Mr Boult said he was appreciative of government support to date, particularly in relation to the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act, introduced in 2013, demand for housing was pushing the price of properties up.
''The demand ... is such that if you build a house today, it could be worth $200,000 more tomorrow, simply because our buyers are not just local people.
''They're buyers from Auckland and Sydney and Shanghai.''
The issue was further complicated by an apparent shortage of rental accommodation, given the increasing popularity of Airbnb, which Mr Boult described as a ''double-edged sword''.
''It's providing more visitor accommodation, which we need, but it's also taken away some of that stock that was available for [rentals].''
When asked, Mr Boult said it was ''unlikely'' the council would look to deliver accommodation itself, but that was ''not off the table''.
Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay said the announcement of the task force came at a ''poignant time''.
He believed the district faced three unique issues - the transient nature of the community, the large growth in young families in the area, and the amount of rental stock moving into Airbnb - and it sometimes appeared as though the issues were ''too difficult ... to find a solution for''.
''There's no better place to try and find a solution for the positive challenges than in Queenstown if it can't be done from Wellington.''
