Manukau mayor eyes housing boost

Manukau City Council has started talks with Government and non-profit agencies aimed at large-scale housing projects to kick-start the city's depressed house-building industry.

Mayor Len Brown hopes to pull together projects that could double the city's pensioner housing, create new emergency housing and build affordable housing for low-income first-home buyers on state and council land.

Housing Minister Phil Heatley has given his blessing to the talks and plans to back them up with a long-awaited "Gateway" scheme to help first-home buyers build houses on state land, due to be launched in October.

A spokesman said the Cabinet was also due to consider on August 3 whether to increase the cap on Welcome Home loans from $280,000 to "probably somewhere between $320,000 and $350,000", which could help finance the affordable housing.

Manukau has been hit harder than anywhere else by the collapse of the home-building market. New dwelling consents fell 67 per cent in the two years to May, from 1606 in the year to May 2007 to just 532 in the latest year. The nationwide fall was only 48 per cent.

To read the full NZ Herald article click here

Posted: 14 Jul 2009

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