Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

The arguments over affordable housing are only adding more opinions and any solution is looking more like a Mission Impossible.

An economist this week informed us that buying your own house is not a good investment and that renting is a better solution. With teenagers not settling down until they are 30 this can only relegate housing to a consumable. When more houses have to be built as rentals, housing will go back to being an investment opportunity. These sucker renters will see their rents double and naturally feel very aggrieved.

Another analysis last week indicated that, of our living costs, our housing cost has had the slowest increase over the past 10 years. Food and transport costs had almost doubled but servicing household needs such as television sets, gadgets, phone and power had increased about 500 per cent in that same time. It would seem that housing is very low on people's priority lists at the moment. Relatively speaking, housing is not a problem at the moment.

Last week I noted the high costs and difficulties over building consents. The days of gigantic building developments that will include low-cost affordable housing appear to be over. The councils, under their current regulations, are only willing to release land that is uneconomic for farming. This includes steeply sloped land that has to be recontoured. A major builder has indicated that any house that is built on even a gentle slope will cost 15 per cent more to build. Houses built on flood prone land usually have to be built as house and land packages. The process of compaction required for a large development would be totally uneconomic but can be managed on a site–by-site basis. Who wants to live in Otara on the Estuary anyway? We have seen enough examples of this type of building disaster in the Bay and in Rotorua recently. Liquefaction is a genuine term used for describing a soil that has the capacity to suddenly turn to porridge when it reaches a certain saturation level. Houses built on a known floodplain are not victim to liquefaction, they are victim to stupidity. I remember being shocked a few years ago when I found out that nine out of the 10 hospitals in San Francisco were built on the earthquake faults. Our council is promoting lifestyles in the Minden Zone with a corresponding requirement for extensive engineering specifications.

Intensive inner city housing is often quoted as an answer but I have been advised that, as a general rule, a second story will be twice the cost of the ground floor to build. Builders were hit in the past few weeks with fines for unsafe building sites, mostly of the type where scaffolding has not met the new standard... The cry from all that I spoke to asked who was going to pay for them. A whole new sub-contracting business will probably have to be developed and these costs will, of course, add to all housing costs. One builder complained saying that they just add regulations such as this but never consider who is going to carry the extra costs.

Infill housing on the back of available quarter-acre sections was always going to be ugly and that has been killed off when the council requirements for subdivision costs. Expensive drives and turning circles meant that the infill solution became more and more uneconomic. Tauranga's answer to cut consent cost for this type of infill in some areas helps considerably but there are only a limited number of sites left.

Ten years ago, many builders started switching from building spec houses to concentrate on renovating older properties. The degree of renovation could take a small bach up to being a million-dollar modern home without the need for the paperwork required for a new house. This has been the main work of many independent builders but, again, that is being targeted by councils and more stringent regulation. My new bedroom has to meet all of the new building regulations, even though my six-year-old house would not pass without an extensive rebuild.

Renovation as an alternative to building has already lost its appeal. Of course, a simple upgrade of an existing house now has to meet all of the modern standards but it is obvious that a new rule is evolving, which says just don't tell the council. The problem comes when the owner then tries to sell the house and the purchaser's building inspector details all the work that will be needed to bring the house up to modern standards and lists missing consents.

Housing problems appear to be a consequence of our whole social fabric changing. Uncommitted, childless professional couples abound that will never want to change their lifestyle and move into cheap housing, even when they start their first family. Single-income families will be pushed further and further out of town. Otara was a solution to the same housing problem in the 60s. We are still living with the consequences of that mistake.

Affordable housing is not a problem, it is a consequence. There is a move afoot for councils to downplay their responsibilities for the social, cultural, economic and health needs of the ratepayers. People are our economic resource and our historical practices for working with people have to change. People have to be our first priority.