A report for today's meeting of the Queenstown Lakes District Council recommends it put expressions of interest for special housing areas (SHA) on ice until it decides whether changes to its lead policy are required.
The report's author, senior policy planner Anita Vanstone, said the lead policy had served the council well during the first two years of its housing accord with the Government.
However, last month's amendments to the legislation underpinning SHAs gave the council a chance to ''strengthen'' the policy and review its overall approach to the resort's housing pressures.
The amendments, which included an extension of the deadline for establishing SHAs until September 2019, provided an ''opportunity to be more strategic in terms of where it wants the community to grow and where SHAs should be located''.
Although the council's housing accord was not due to expire for another 12 months, the new council might want to review it earlier, Ms Vanstone said.
Pausing the SHA process would also provide time for two key studies to be completed that would better inform future land-use decisions.
The council was already working on a Ladies Mile master plan in conjunction with the New Zealand Transport Agency, and would soon commission a Wakatipu Basin land use planning study (WBLUPS), due for completion in January.
''The proposed district plan, WBLUPS and the Ladies Mile master plan will help identify areas that could best absorb further development in terms of landscape impact and infrastructural efficiency and costs.''
In another housing-related item in the meeting's agenda, councillors will be asked to approve a new financial guarantee for the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust.
In an attached letter, the trust's executive officer, Julie Scott, said it had created a lending product for eligible first home buyers in 2011 called the Starter Loan programme.
The programme had offered five-year, low-interest loans, with the funds provided by the Central Lakes Trust (CLT).
In 2012 the council had agreed to be the programme's guarantor to a maximum of $2million.
Ms Scott said the programme had effectively become redundant in the past two years because of the low interest rates offered by commercial banks.
Because many households assisted by the trust had remortgaged with banks, the trust had been left to make principal and interest repayments to the CLT, and was no longer making a return.
It had proposed to the CLT to convert the loan to a five-year, $4million loan for its 11 new rental homes in Shotover Country.
In his covering report for councillors, acting chief executive Stewart Burns said the council guarantee would allow the trust to uplift the remaining $4million in funding from the CLT to support its Shotover Country rental scheme.
In return, the trust would provide the council with an indemnity for the same amount.
