New SHA’s great but more needed

Matt Paetz, a leading New Zealand planner specialising in housing policy and development who is presenting at the New Zealand Planning Institute’s annual conference in Dunedin next week, has worked on housing accords and SHAs in Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown.

He says the announcement of 36 new special housing areas (SHAs) in Auckland is a great short term fix but more needs to be done.

The Property Group’s Auckland planning manager Matthew Paetz says in their experience across the country with SHAs they have found a lot of interest from developers.

“It streamlines and lessens the risk in the planning process. Councils are seizing the opportunity too and taking a positive ‘can do’ approach. It’s great but a short term fix. We have been talking about the need for councils and government to take a different approach to planning for housing since 2007. It’s great to see some progress starting to be made,” Paetz says.

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