ACT's 27-year-old deputy leader Brooke van Velden has detailed her struggle to get into the housing market, as David Seymour outlined his party's new housing policy in Tauranga today.
Van Velden says she lost out on a home due to house prices rising before development closed.
“A few years ago, I saved up money and thought I did OK, and went out to the market to see what I could afford to buy.
“I ended up getting a house in Tawa, unfortunately by the time it came for the development to close house prices in the area had gone up by $100,000 which meant it was in the developers best interest to cancel the agreement and out it back onto market where they could make millions more out of all the homes.
“The problem really is that land price is just too high," she told media.
The inability of young people to get on the property ladder led to societal problems, van Velden said.
"We need more homes for people of my generation because this has a huge societal repercussion," she said.
"If we don't have people having that stability, people are putting off having families and that's going to have a huge impact for generations to come."
Van Velden told her story as ACT announced its Housing and Infrastructure Strategy, Build Like the Boomers.
“ACT will allow the next generation to Build Like the Boomers so we can create new opportunities and rebuild a country we can all be proud of,” ACT leader David Seymour said.
“‘Boomer’ has been used as a term of derision, but that generation knew how to build houses. Since the mid-1970s, our population has grown by two million, but we’re building fewer houses now than we did then. It’s no wonder we have a housing crisis.
“Housing costs as a proportion of income are some of the highest in the developed world. An entire generation has been locked out of homeownership. Thousands live in insecure housing and others have no home whatsoever."
Seymour pledges that ACT will target the Resource Management Act should it be elected to Parliament.
“ACT would repeal the Resource Management Act and replace it with separate Environmental Protection and Urban Development Acts.
"The Urban Development Act would be based on the recommendations of the Productivity Commission’s Better Urban Planning report.
“ACT would also take the politics out of infrastructure and get central and local government working together through 30-year infrastructure partnerships, devolving revenue and responsibility to regional governments and the private sector, while strengthening accountability and oversight from central government," he said.
In a statement released this afternoon ACT said if elected it will:
• Repeal and replace the Resource Management Act
• Get councils out of the building consent and inspection business and introduce mandatory private insurance for new housing
• Take the politics out of infrastructure and get central and local government working together through long-term infrastructure partnerships
• Make it easier for investors from OECD countries to invest in infrastructure
• Establish a state-owned Infrastructure Corporation to own, manage, and expand the government’s infrastructure assets
• Reform building materials regulation to automatically approve building products approved by high-quality regulators in similar jurisdictions.
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